Eve raised her arms about Mr. Prohack's neck, lifted herself up by them,
and silently kissed him. Then she sank back to her former position.

"I've been a great trial to you lately, haven't I?" she breathed.

"Not more so than usual," he answered. "You know you always abuse your
power."

"But I _have_ been queer?"

"Well," judicially, "perhaps you have. Perhaps five per cent or so above
your average of queerness."

"Didn't the doctor say what I'd got was traumatic neurasthenia?"

"That or something equally absurd."

"Well, I haven't got it any more. I'm cured. You'll see."

Just then the dining-room clock entered upon its lengthy business of
chiming the hour of midnight. And as it faintly chimed Mr. Prohack,
supporting his wife, had a surpassing conviction of the beauty of
existence and in particular of his own good fortune--though the matter
of his inheritance never once entered his mind. He gazed down at Eve's
ingenuous features, and saw in them the fastidious fineness which had
caused her to recoil so sensitively from her son's display at the Grand
Babylon. Yes, women had a spiritual beauty to which men could not
pretend.