Silently we drew back from the door-way, and Madame closed the door, reducing the promethean groans and the strong ammoniacal odors.  I did not see the face of Carpenter, because he had turned it from us.  Rosythe favored me with a smile, and whispered, “Your friend doesn’t care for beautee!” Then he added, “What do you suppose he meant by that stuff about ‘the price of life’ and ‘the choice of God?’”

“Didn’t you really get it?” I asked.

“I’m damned if I did.”

“My dear fellow,” I said, “you didn’t tell us what sort of place this was; and Carpenter thought it must be a maternity-ward.”

The moving picture critic of the Western City “Times” gave me one wild look; then from his throat there came a sound like the sudden bleat of a young sheep in pain.  It caused Carpenter to start, and Madame Planchet to start, and for the first time since we entered the place, the birds of paradise gave signs of life elsewhere than in the eye-muscles.  The sheep gave a second bleat, and then a third, and Rosythe, red in the face and apparently choking, turned and fled to the corridor.

Madame Planchet drew me apart and said:  “Meester Billee, tell me something.  Ees eet true that thees gentleman ees a healer?  He takes away the pains?”

“He did it for me,” I answered.

“He ees vairy handsome, eh, Meester Billee?”

“Yes, that is true.”

“I have an idea; eet ees a wondair.”  She turned to my friend.  “Meester Carpentair, they tell me that you heal the pains.  I think eet would be a vairy fine thing eef you would come to my parlor and attend the ladies while I give them the permanent wave, and while I skeen them, and make them the dimples and the sweet smiles.  They suffer so, the poor dears, and eef you would seet and hold their hands, they would love eet, they would come every day for eet, and you would be famous, and you would be reech.  You would meet—­oh, such lovely ladies!  The best people in the ceety come to my beauty parlors, and they would adore you, Meester Carpentair—­what do you say to eet?”

It struck me as curious, as I looked back upon it; Madame Planchet so far had not heard the sound of Carpenter’s voice.  Now she forced him to speak, but she did not force him to look at her.  His gaze went over her head, as if he were seeing a vision; he recited: 

“Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet; therefore the Lord will smite with a scab the crown of the head of the daughters of Zion, and the Lord will discover their secret parts.”

“Oh, mon Dieu!” cried Madame Planchet.