"The leopard won't change his spots, you know, no matter how many kind ladies dab at him with their social paints."
"Then they will be cut out or burned out," Jean said in such a still voice that Pat stared. But Jean and Herrick were looking straight into each other's eyes and did not notice.
"Poor leopard, he'll die under such treatment."
"I don't know that that would be such a loss to the rest of the animals if he did."
"No. I don't suppose it would," Herrick said after a pause, in a voice controlled only by the need to maintain a pretense before Pat.
Pat picked up the table of statistics she and Jean had been discussing and studied it closely. For a moment there was not a sound. Then Herrick went over to the couch with a book and Jean took up the argument again.
Herrick never joined the conversation after that evening but it seemed to Pat that he was always listening and she felt that Jean felt it too.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
One day in September when Jean had been working almost four months, Dr. Mary came to her with an open letter in her hand.
"Jean, I'm going to give you this case, because I feel in my backbone that it's out of the usual run, and that's saying a good deal, with some of those we've had lately, isn't it?"