lean face seemed to grow longer and longer, for Moon was unmistakably sneering. “No,” he said; “I don’t think it’s at all necessary.” 

 “What do you mean?” asked Rosamund quickly. “Why not?” 

 “Because he is in one now,” answered Michael Moon, in a quiet but ugly voice. “Why, didn’t you know?” 

 “What?” cried the girl, and there was a break in her voice; for the Irishman’s face and voice were really almost creepy. With his dark figure and dark sayings in all that sunshine he looked like the devil in paradise. 

 “I’m sorry,” he continued, with a sort of harsh humility. “Of course we don’t talk about it much... but I thought we all really knew.” 

 “Knew what?” 

 “Well,” answered Moon, “that Beacon House is a certain rather singular sort of house—a house with the tiles loose, shall we say? Innocent Smith is only the doctor that visits us; hadn’t you come when he called before? As most of our maladies are melancholic, of course he has to be extra cheery. Sanity, of course, seems a very bumptious eccentric thing to us. Jumping over a wall, climbing a tree—that’s his bedside manner.” 

 “You daren’t say such a thing!” cried Rosamund in a rage. “You daren’t suggest that I—” 

 “Not more than I am,” said Michael soothingly; “not more than the rest of us. Haven’t you ever noticed that Miss Duke never sits still—a notorious sign? Haven’t you ever observed that Inglewood is always washing his hands— a known mark of mental disease? I, of course, am a dipsomaniac.” 

 “I don’t believe you,” broke out his companion, not without agitation. “I’ve heard you had some bad habits—” 

 “All habits are bad habits,” said Michael, with deadly calm. “Madness does not come by breaking out, but by giving in; by settling down in some dirty, little, self-repeating circle of ideas; by being tamed. YOU went mad about money, because you’re an heiress.” 

 “It’s a lie,” cried Rosamund furiously. “I never was mean about money.” 

 “You were worse,” said Michael, in a low voice and yet violently. “You thought that other people were. You thought every man who came near you must be a fortune-hunter; you would not let yourself go and be sane; and now you’re mad and I’m mad, and serve us right.” 

 “You brute!” 

 Prev. P 27/132 next