Her blue eyes, greatly troubled, looked into mine, then away, and her
hand slipped into my hand and held it tightly. "Sometimes I hate
people! They are so mean, so nasty!"

"What are they saying?" I straightened the slender fingers curled
about mine and stroked them. "Only dead people aren't talked about.
What is being said about me?"

"Horrid things--not to me, of course. They'd better not be! But--Mrs.
Herbert came to see me yesterday afternoon. She wasn't at the luncheon
and Grace got the first rap, but most of her hatefulness she took out
on you. She's worse than a germ disease. I always feel I ought to be
disinfected after I see her. If she were a leper she wouldn't be
allowed at large, and she's much more deadly. People like that ought
to be locked up."

"What did she tell you about me?" I smiled in Kitty's flushed face,
smiled also at the remembrance of Alice Herbert's would-be cut some
time ago, but I did not mention it. "You oughtn't to be so hard on
her. She's crazy."

"But crazy people are dangerous. A mosquito can kill a king, and a
king has to be careful about mosquitoes. I'm more afraid of people
than I am of insects. If you could only label them--"

"People label themselves. What did Alice Herbert say about me?"

"First, of course, how strange it was that you should care to live in
Scarborough Square, especially as you were a person who held yourself
so aloof from--"