“What is the matter?  Has anything happened?”

“Nothing particularly new or strange.  Something happens every hour, you know; people are born, bartered—­die and are buried; lives get blackened and hearts bleed and are trampled by human hoofs, until they are crushed beyond recognition.  My dear, civilization is a huge cheat, and the Red Law of Savages in primeval night is worth all the tomes of jurisprudence, from the Pandects of Justinian to the Commentaries of Blackstone, and the wisdom of Coke and Story.  Oh halcyon days of prehistoric humanity!  When instead of bowing and smiling, and chatting gracefully with one’s deadliest foe, drinking his Amontillado and eating his truffles, people had the sublime satisfaction of roasting his flesh and calcining his bones, for an antediluvian dejeuner a la fourchette,—­(only, to escape anachronism) sans fourchette! What a pity I have not the privilege of la belle sauvage, far away in some cannibalistic nook of pagan Polynesia.”

She was sitting with the bedclothes drawn closely over her, and Regina could scarcely recognize in the pale, almost haggard face beside her the radiant, laughing woman who had seemed so dazzling a few hours before, as she burned away in her festive robes.

“Olga, you talk like a heathen.”

“Of course.  To be sincere, unselfish, honest, and womanly is nowaday inevitably heathenish.  I wish I had a nose as flat as a buckwheat cake, and lips three inches thick, with huge brass rings dangling from them both!  And for raiment, instead of Worth’s miracles, a mantle of featherwork, or a deerskin cut into fringe, and studded with blue glass beads!  Civilization is a gibing impostor, and religion is laughing in its sacerdotal sleeves at its own unblushing——­”

“Hush, Olga!  You are blasphemous.  No wonder you shiver while you talk.  New York is full of noble Christians, of generous charming people, and there must be some wickedness everywhere.  Don’t you know that God will ultimately overrule all, and evangelize the world?”

“Peut-etre! But I have not even the traditional grain of mustard seed to sow; and I might answer you as Laplace once did:  ’Je n’avais pas besoin de cette hypothese.’”

“Had you a pleasant evening at Mrs. Tarrant’s?” asked Regina, anxious to change the topic.

“Wonderfully brilliant, and quite a topaz success.  I sparkled, blazed, and people complimented profusely (criticizing sotto voce), and envied openly; and when I bowed myself out at last, I felt like Sir Peter Teazle on quitting Lady Sneerwell’s:  ’I leave my character behind me.’  Mamma was charmed with me, and Mr. Silas Midas looked proud possession, as if he had in his vest pocket a bill of sale to every pound of my white flesh,—­and Mr. Erle Palma smiled as benignly as some cast-iron statue of Pluto, freshly painted white, and glistening in the sunshine. A propos! I asked him to-night