"They're natural, they're natural," I privately reflected; "that is, he's natural to _her_, but he's not so to me." And as if seeing depths in this, and to try it, I appealed to him. "Do, my dear man, let us have it again. It's the picture, of all pictures, that most needs an interpreter. _Don't_ we want," I asked of Mrs. Server, "to know what it means?" The figure represented is a young man in black--a quaint, tight black dress, fashioned in years long past; with a pale, lean, livid face and a stare, from eyes without eyebrows, like that of some whitened old-world clown. In his hand he holds an object that strikes the spectator at first simply as some obscure, some ambiguous work of art, but that on a second view becomes a representation of a human face, modelled and coloured, in wax, in enamelled metal, in some substance not human. The object thus appears a complete mask, such as might have been fantastically fitted and worn. "Yes, what in the world does it mean?" Mrs. Server replied. "One could call it--though that doesn't get one much further--the Mask of Death." "Why so?" I demanded while we all again looked at the picture. "Isn't it much rather the Mask of Life? It's the man's own face that's Death. The other one, blooming and beautiful----" "Ah, but with an awful grimace!" Mrs. Server broke in. "The other one, blooming and beautiful," I repeated, "is Life, and he's going to put it on; unless indeed he has just taken it off." "He's dreadful, he's awful--that's what I mean," said Mrs. Server. "But what does Mr. Long think?" "The artificial face, on the other hand," I went on, as Long now said nothing, "is extremely studied and, when you carefully look at it, charmingly pretty. I don't see the grimace." "I don't see anything else!" Mrs. Server good-humouredly insisted. "And what does Mr. Obert think?" He kept his eyes on her a moment before replying. "He thinks it looks like a lovely lady." "That grinning mask? What lovely lady?" "It does," I declared to him, really seeing what he meant--"it does look remarkably like Mrs. Server." She laughed, but forgivingly. "I'm immensely obliged. You deserve," she continued to me, "that I should say the gentleman's own face is the image of a certain other gentleman's." "It isn't the image of yours," Obert said to me, fitting the cap, "but it's a funny thing that it should really recall to one some face among us here, on this occasion--I mean some face in our party--that I can't think of." We had our eyes again on the ominous figure. "We've seen him yesterday--we've seen him already this morning." Obert, oddly enough, still couldn't catch it. "Who the deuce is it?" "I know," I returned after a moment--our friend's reference having again, in a flash, become illuminating. "But nothing would induce me to tell." "If _I_ were the flattered individual," Long observed, speaking for the first time, "I've an idea that you'd give me the benefit of the compliment. Therefore it's probably not me."