He stepped aside.
Without looking at him she quickly opened the door and passed out.
The Divorcée nervously rolled up her manuscript.
The usual laugh was not forthcoming. No one dared. Men can't rough-house that kind of a woman.
After a moment's silence the Critic spoke up. "You were right to read that story. It is not the sort of thing that lends itself to narrating. Of course you might have acted it out, but you were wise not to."
"I can't help it—got to say it," said the Journalist: "What a horrid woman!"
The Divorcée looked at him in amazement. "How can you say that?" she exclaimed. "I thought I had made her so reasonable. Just what all women ought to be, and what none of us are."
"Thank God for that," said the Journalist. "I'd as lief live in a world created and run by George Bernard Shaw as in one where women were like that."
"Come, come," interrupted the Doctor, who had been eyeing her profile with a curious half amused expression, all through the reading: "Don't let us get on that subject to-night. A story is a story. You have asked, and you have received. None of you seem to really like any story but your own, and I must confess that among us, we are putting forth a strange baggage."