“I only do that,” laughed the Critic, “when I’m getting paid for it.  After all, as the Violinist remarked, the situation is a favorite one in melodrama, from the money-coining ‘Two Orphans’ down.  The only trouble is, the Lawyer poured his villain and hero into one mould.  The other man ought to have trapped her, and the hero rescued her.  But that is only the difference between reality and art.  Life is inartistic.  Art is only choosing the best way.  Life never does that.”

“Pig’s wrist,” said the Doctor, and that settled the question.

VIII

THE JOURNALIST’S STORY

IN A RAILWAY STATION

THE TALE OF A DANCER

On Friday night, just as we were finishing dinner—­we had eaten inside—­the Divorcee said:  “It may not be in order to make the remark, but I cannot help saying that it is so strange to think that we are sitting here so quietly in a country at war, suffering for nothing, very little inconvenienced, even by the departure of all the men.  The field work seems to be going on just the same.  Every one seems calm.  It is all most unexpected and strange to me.”

“I don’t see it that way at all,” said the Journalist.  “I feel as if I were sitting on a volcano, knowing it was going to erupt, but not knowing at what moment.”

“That I understand,” said the Divorcee, “but that is not exactly what I mean.  I meant that, in spite of that feeling which every one between here and Paris must have, I see no outward signs of it.”

“They are all about us just the same,” remarked the Doctor, “whether you see them or not.  Did it ever happen to you to be walking in some quiet city street, near midnight, when all the houses were closed, and only here and there a street lamp gleamed, and here and there a ray of light filtered through the shuttered window of some silent house, and to suddenly remember that inside all these dark walls the tragedies of life were going on, and that, if a sudden wave of a magician’s wand were to wipe away the walls, how horrified, or how amused one would be?”

“Well,” said the Lawyer, “I have had that idea many times, but it has come to me more often in some hotel in the mountains of Switzerland.  I remember one night sitting on the terrace at Murren, with the Jungfrau rising in bridal whiteness above the black sides of the Schwarze-Monch, and the moon shining so brightly over the slopes, that I could count any number of isolated little chalets perched on the ledges, and I never had the feeling so strongly of life going on with all its joys and griefs and crimes, invisible, but oppressive.”