, therefore
let you all pass for men.' I don't deal more hardly with you than with
the rest, you see. You are only one of many."

"That is the unkindest thing you ever said to me. And that is saying
much. Yet I, too, will beseech the Fates in my turn."

"To grant you what?"

"The finding of you in a gentler mind."

The faintest flicker of a smile crosses her lips. She lays her knitting
on her knee for an instant, that she may the more readily let her
tapered fingers droop until they touch the pale brow of the child at her
feet; then she resumes it again, with a face calm and emotionless as
usual.

"Old Browne's girl can't owe her father much," Desmond is saying
_apropos_ of something both lost and gone before, so far as Kelly and
Mrs. Herrick are concerned.

"About a hundred thousand pounds," says Ronayne. "She is quite a catch,
you know. No end of money. The old fellow died a year ago."

"No, he didn't; he demised," says Kelly, emerging from obscurity into
the light of conversation once more. "At least, so the papers said.
There is a tremendous difference, you know. A poor man dies, a rich man
demises. One should always bear in mind that important social
distinction."

"And the good man! What of him?" says Desmond, looking at his friend.
"What does Montgomery say?"

"Yes, that is very mysterious," says Kelly, with bated breath.
"According to Montgomery, 'the good man _never_ dies.' Think of that!
_Never_ dies. He walks the earth forever, like a superannuated ghost,
only awfuller."

"Have you ever seen one?" asks Olga, leaning forward.

"What? a man that never died? Yes, lots of 'em. Here's one," laying his
hand upon his breast.

"No. A man that never will die?"

"How can I answer such a question as that? Perhaps Ronayne, there, may
be such a one."

"How stupid you are! I mean, did you ever meet a man who _couldn't_
die?"

"Never,--if he went the right way about it."

"Then, according to your showing, you have never seen a good man." She
leans back again in her chair, fatigued but satisfied.

"I'm afraid they are few and far between," says Hermia.

"Now and again they _have_ appeared," says Mr. Kelly, with a modest
glance. "Perhaps I shall never die."

"Don't make us more unhappy than we need be," says Mrs. Herrick,
plaintively.

"How sad that good men should be so scarce!" says Miss Fitzgerald, with
a glance she means to be funny, but which is only dull.

"Don't make trite remarks, Bella,"