“But isn’t Schopenhauer right where he says, ‘Look well at a human being the first time you see him, for you will never see _him_ again?’”
“I should say Gilson was--not very clean, then. Who is he?”
[Illustration: “_Then you’re not a Buddhist or a Spiritualist?_”]
“He came here four years ago from we don’t know where, and exhibited a lot of his own paintings, most of them portraits of himself in all sorts of strange attitudes and clothes. Everybody ran after him--we have a new craze here each year, you know. That year it was Gilson. A girl, a Miss Manners, married him. If it hadn’t been for that, he’d have been forgotten, and would have disappeared. As it is, we still have him with us. That’s his wife on the sofa in the corner.”
Frothingham looked toward the enormously fat woman disposed there, and gazing round vaguely, with a sleepy, comfortable, complacent smile. “How do you know it’s a sofa she’s sitting on?” he asked.
“Because I saw it before she sat down,” replied Cecilia. “Her fad is a diet of raw wheat. If she’d been where you could see her at the table, you’d have noticed that she ate only raw wheat. She’s served specially everywhere since she got the idea last autumn. She brings her wheat with her.”
“And what is your fad?--you say everyone has a fad.”
“Everyone except me.” She smiled pensively. “I’m too serious for fads, I fear.”
“Then you’re not a Buddhist or a Spiritualist?” he said, with a feeling of relief.
The colour flared into her face. “Spiritualism!” Her lips compressed, and seemed even thinner. Her expression vividly suggested her father. “But _that_ is not a fad! Only the thoughtless and the ignorant call it a fad.”
Frothingham’s face became blank. “This is a time to sit tight,” he said to himself. “She’s looking at me as if I were a witch and she were about to burn--no, hang--me.”
“It would be a dreary world, it seems to me,” she went on, her voice low, and a queer light in her softening eyes, “if it were not for the friendship and guidance of those in the world beyond.”
“Really!” His tone might have meant almost anything except the wonder and amusement it concealed.
Her father came to take her home. “We should be glad to see you, Lord Frothingham, at our house,” he said graciously. “I hope you will let Mrs. Staunton bring you.”