CHAPTER VI

MR. CRAIG IN SWEET DANGER


It is a rash enterprise to open wide to the world the private
doors of the family, to expose intimate interiors all unconscious
of outside observation, and all unprepared for it. Such frankness
tends to destroy "sympathetic interest," to make delusion and
illusion impossible; it gives cynicism and his brother,
pharisaism, their opportunity to simper and to sneer. Still rasher
is it to fling wide the doors of a human heart, and, without any
clever arrangement of lights and shades, reveal in the full face
of the sun exactly what goes on there. We lie to others
unconsciously; we lie to ourselves both consciously and
unconsciously. We admit and entertain dark thoughts, and at the
first alarm of exposure deny that we ever saw them before; we
cover up our motives, forget where we have hidden them, and wax
justly indignant when they are dug out and confronted with us. We
are scandalized, quite honestly, when others are caught doing what
we ourselves have done. We are horrified and cry "Monster!" when
others do what we ourselves refrain from doing only through lack
of the bad courage.

No man is a hero who is not a hero to his valet; and no woman a
lady unless her maid thinks so. Margaret Severence's new maid
Selina was engaged to be married; the lover had gone on a spree,