Suddenly the soft edge of a brush leaves a hard line

Hi all,
System...
Photoshop CS4, on a MacPro, Snow Leopard, with a Wacom Intuos, PSD file, 16bit.
Document...
I have a full-height portrait with an almost--white background.  In photoshop, I added a layer and painted full white to cover the background.  Added a mask to the new white layer, now I am using a paint brush to mask out the white on the people in the portrait.  On the floor of the portrait, I use a soft brush to transition from the pure white painted layer to the actual white floor, allowing the natural shadows on the floor to be revealed.
Issue...
I have done this a million times without an issue, but for some reason, the last two sessions where I have tried to do this, there is a cleanly defined (though faint) border on the outside edge of the softness area of the brush.  Take a look at the enclosed screenshot.  You will see the size of the brush as defined by the black circle, then outside of the brush (near the edges of the screenshot) you will see a faint outer ring where the edge of the softness stops somewhat abruptly.  Although faint in this screenshot, there is clearly an outside edge to the brush blur.  As a result, I cannot paint a clean transition with the mask tool.
Thanks for your help.
Matt

Howdy Cowboy,
I have never seen this problem either.  I can soften the edges of the mask with both the blur tool and a blur filter.  But I prefer not to have to do that workaround.
I did some additional testing.... Painting on a clean layer gives a clean soft brush.  The problem only reveals itself when painting on a mask.
As I mentioned before, this problem suddenly appeared, with no changes between the brush working properly and now.
As a double-check, I made sure that none of the brush parameters had changed (such as wet edge, etc) and everything is set properly.
Thanks for the reply.
Matt

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