n't
think you will be satisfied with my diet. I never eat meat, I want you to
know, and you surely do."

Frederick laughed. "We physicians," he said, "are also coming more and
more to give up a meat diet."

"I think it is horrible to eat meat," said Miss Burns. "I have a handsome
fowl in my garden. I see it every day, and then I go and cut its throat
and eat it up. When we were children, we had a pony which had to be
killed, and the people in the East End ate it." She drew her long kid
gloves from her hands without removing them from her arms. "People eat
dogs, too. I adore dogs. But the worst thing is the frightful, endless
shedding of blood which human meat-eaters deem necessary for their
preservation. Think of all the butchers in the world, think of those
immense slaughter-houses in Chicago and other places where the
machine-like, wholesale murder of innocent animals is constantly going
on. People can live without meat. It isn't indispensable to their
welfare."

She said all this in a tone of seriousness tinged with humour, speaking
a correct, though somewhat laboured German.

"For various reasons," Frederick said, "I still hesitate to form a
definite opinion in regard to meat-eating. As for myself, I can do very
well without meat, provided I have my steak regularly every day for lunch
and my roast beef for dinner."

Miss Burns looked astonished, then laughed merrily.

"You are a physician," she cried. "You physicians are all animal
torturers."

"You refer to vivisection?"

"Yes, to vivisection. It's a shame, it's a sin. It's a horrible sin to
torture innocent animals to death just for the sake of adding a few days
more to the life of some commonplace person."

Frederick did not reply, being too much a man of science to concur in her
opinion. Miss Burns detected this, and said:

"You German physicians are horrible men. When I am in Berlin, I am in
a constant state of dread that I shall die unexpectedly and before my
relatives can prevent it, I shall be taken to your dreadful laboratories
for dissection."

"Oh, then you have been in Berlin, Miss Burns?"

"Certainly, I have been everywhere."

The conversation now turned on Berlin. Miss Burns spoke of it glowingly,
because it offered the greatest opportunities for hearing good music and
seeing good plays.

"I have a number of friends among the Berlin professors and artists. One
of them is a Polish pianist. He brings back money by the bushel from his