"There he gets his amusement at the expense of those poor weaklings, whose souls have been wrenched away from them, who have lost the feeling of their human dignity, the consciousness of their right to live, even the very sense of pleasure; who groan under that most unjust burden, their own self-contempt; who feel the continual oppression of a guilt which does not exist, and for whom the first wrinkle is as a sentence of death.
"But on his domestic hearth there beams another fire, and beams on another kind of weakling; a strange creature, now no longer able to descend into Life's hurly-burly; for whom certain deeds, for many a century regarded with scorn, have through long heredity of atavistic feelings become really loathsome. …
"Our duty is to amuse them—the lords of life and death—with the effects of contrast; that they may have the assurance of having experienced the whole gamut of emotions, that they may enjoy their manhood to the full."
When Witold came home to-day from the club (which was at about noon) Martha received him in a beautiful white peignoir,
