"Oh, no. He was far too literary for _that_," I answered. "He had a
reputation to lose."

"Pretty good," said Minver, "even if Ormond _is_ dead."

Wanhope ignored us both. "After awhile, his wife said, she began to
notice a certain change in his attitude toward the personifications. She
noticed this, always expecting that fit of sickness for him; but she was
not so much troubled by his returning seriousness. Oh, I ought to tell
you that when she first began to be anxious for him she privately wrote
home to their family doctor, telling him how strangely happy Ormond was,
and asking him if he could advise anything. He wrote back that if Ormond
was so very happy they had better not do anything to cure him; that the
disease was not infectious, and was seldom fatal."

"What an ass!" said Rulledge.

"Yes, I think he was, in this instance. But probably he had been
consulted a good deal by Mrs. Ormond," said Wanhope. "The change that
began to set her mind at rest about Ormond was his taking the
personifications more seriously. Why, he began to ask, but always with a
certain measure of joke in it, why shouldn't there be something _in_ the
personifications? Why shouldn't Morn and Eve come corporeally walking up
their lawn, with little or no clothes on, or Despair be sitting in their
woods with her hair over her face, or Famine coming gauntly up to their
back door for a hand-out? Why shouldn't they any day see pop-eyed Rapture
passing on the trolley, or Meditation letting the car she intended to
take go by without stepping lively enough to get on board? He pretended
that we could have the personifications back again, if we were not so