“I have. You surely don’t mind.”
“No,” he said, with an effort. Then: “Are you laughing to-night?”
“No. You have done an absurd thing, of course, but it happens to be becoming. You look—well, pretty—yes, that’s the word—in your wig. Many men are ugly in their own hair. And, after all, what would life be without its absurdities? Probably you are right to enjoy being laughed at.”
Eustace, who had seriously meditated putting off his mask forever that night, began to change his mind. The sentence, “Many men are ugly in their own hair,” dwelt with him, and he felt fortified in his powdered wig. What if he took it off, and henceforth Winifred found him ugly? Does not the safety of many of us lie merely in dressing up? Do we not buy our fate at the costumier’s?
“Just tell me one thing,” Winifred went on. “Are you natural?”
“Natural?” he hesitated.
“Yes; I think you must be. You’ve got a whimsical nature.”
“I suppose so.” He thought of his journey with his father years ago, and added: “I wish I hadn’t.”
“Why? There is a charm in the fantastic, although comparatively few people see it. Life must be a sort of Arabian Nights Entertainment to you.”
“Sometimes. To-night it is different. It seems a sort of Longfellow life.”