Take a pipe." "No, I must go.

I am the easier in my mind, but I am tired and not at all in the pipe mood." He went out through the hall, and with a hasty "good-night" to his hostess and "pleasant dreams--or none," went slowly down the avenue.
The woman he left, with her knitting needles at rest a moment, was considering the man and his moods with such intuitive sympathy and comprehension as belongs to the sex which is physiologically the more subject to abrupt changes in the climate of the mind.

As her husband entered, she began anew the small steadying industry for which man has no substitute.
"Upon my word, James, when you desire to exchange confidences, you must get further away from me." "You don't mean me to believe you overheard our talk in the library, with the door closed and the curtain across it." Her acuteness of hearing often puzzled him, and he had always to ask for proof.
She nodded gay assurance, and said again, ceasing to knit, "I overheard too much--oh, not all--bits--enough to trouble me.

I moved away so as not to hear.

All I care to know is how to be of real service to a friend to whom we owe so much." "I want you--in fact, Mark wants you--to hear in full what you know in part." "Well, James, I have very little curiosity about the details of the misfortunes of my friends unless to know is to obtain means of helpfulness." "You won't get any here, I fear, but as he has been often strange and depressed and, as he says, unresponsive to your kindness, he does want you now to see what cause there was." "Very well, if he wants it.