it quite too severe a tax on my powers of simulation and
dissimulation. Those are powers you never call in play?" he added, with
a most pleasant smile and glance at her.

"Simulation and dissimulation?" repeated Lois, who had by no means got
her usual balance of mind or manner yet. "Are those powers which ought
to be called into play?"

"What are you going to do?"

"When?"

"When, for instance, you are in the mood for a grand theme of Handel,
and somebody gives you a sentimental bit of Rossini. Or when
Mendelssohn is played as if 'songs without words' were songs without
meaning. Or when a singer simply displays to you a VOICE, and leaves
music out of the question altogether."

"That is hard!" said Lois.

"What is one to do then?"

"It is hard," Lois said again. "But I suppose one ought always to be
true."

"If I am true, I must say what I think."

"Yes. If you speak at all."

"What will _they_ think then?"

"Yes," said Lois. "But, after all, that is not the first question."

"What is the first question?"

"I think--to do right."

"But what _is_ right? What will people think of me, if I tell them
their playing is abominable?"

"You need not say it just with those words," said Lois. "And perhaps,
if anybody told them the truth, they would do better. At any rate, what
they think is not the question, Mr. Dillwyn."

"What is the question?" he asked, smiling.

"What the Lord will think."

"Miss Lois, do you never use dissimulation?"

Lois could not help colouring, a little distressed.

"I try not," she answered. "I dare say I do, sometimes. I dare not say
I do not. It is very difficult for a woman to help it."

"More difficult for a woman than for a man?"

"I do not know. I suppose it is."

"Why should that be?"

"I do not know--unless because she is the weaker, and it may be part of
the defensive armour of a weak animal."

Mr. Dillwyn laughed a little.

"But that is _dis_simulation," said Lois. "One is not bound always to
say all one thinks; only never to say what one does not think."

"You would always give a true answer to a question?"

"I would try."

"I believe it. And now, Miss Lois, in that trust, I am going to ask you
a question. Do you recollect a certain walk in the rain?"

"Certainly!" she said, looking at him with some anxiety.

"And the conversation we held under the umbrella, without simulation or
dissimulation?"

"Yes."

"You tacitly--perhaps more than tacitly--blam