"That was a pretty little story," she said. "It was a dear little story. My great lady was present to-night. We passed and repassed each other, and gazed placidly at each other's eyebrows. We were vaguely haunted by a faint fancy that we might have met before; but the faculties become dimmed with advancing years, and we could not remember where or how it happened. One often feels that one has met people, you know." She balanced her gleaming screen gracefully, looking at him from under its shadow. "And it is not only on account of my complexion that I want my peacock feathers," she continued, dropping her great lady by the way as if she had not picked her up in the interim. "I want them to conceal my emotions if your revelations surprise me. Have you never seen me use them when receiving the compliments of Senator Planefield and his friends? A little turn to the right or the left--the least graceful little turn--and I can look as I please, and they will see nothing and only hear my voice, which, I trust, is always sufficiently under control." She wondered if it was sufficiently under control now. She was not sure, and because she was not sure she made the most reckless speeches she could think of. There was a story she had heard of a diplomatist, who once so entirely bewildered his fellow-diplomats that they found it impossible to cope with him; they were invariably outwitted by him: the greatest subtlety, the most wondrous _coup d'état_, he baffled alike; mystery surrounded him; his every act was enshrouded in it; with such diplomatic methods it was madness to combat. When his brilliant and marvellous career was at an end his secret was discovered; on every occasion he had told the simple, exact truth. As she leaned back in her chair and played with her screen Bertha thought of this story. She had applied it to herself before this. The one thing which would be incredible to him at this moment, the one thing it would appear more than incredible that she should tell him, would be the truth--if he realized what that truth was. Any other story, however wild, might have its air or suggestion of plausibility; but that, being what it was, she should have the nerve, the daring, the iron strength of self-control, which it would require to make a fearless jest of the simple, terrible truth, it would seem to him the folly of a madman to believe, she knew. To look him in the eye with a smile, and tell him that she feared his glance and dreaded his words, would place the statement without the pale of probability. She had told him things as true before, and he had not once thought of believing them. "It is never difficult to persuade him _not_ to believe me," she thought. There was no one of her many moods of which she felt such terror, in her more natural moments, as of the one which held possession of her now; and yet there was none she felt to be so safe, which roused her to such mental exhilaration while its hour