“You are late, Miss Burns.  Aren’t you feeling well?” inquired the host, with an immobile mask-like seriousness of expression.

“Oh, yes, Mr. Brown.  I’m always all right,” Miss Burns answered brightly.  “Bring me my regular lunch.  But the gentleman, I am afraid, will not be satisfied with it.  Perhaps you have something special for him?”

Frederick, however, insisted upon ordering the very same as Miss Burns.

“I give you fair warning,” she said when they were alone, “I really don’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 American tours.  He owns an estate near Cracow, and has asked me to visit him there.  Unless I accept his invitation sooner than I expect to, I shall not see Berlin again for a long time.”