"It's a promise, with a condition," said Arthur, laughing. "She will—if she can. Now I don't think promises like that are worth much. Do you, Marie?"
"It's the most prudent sort of promise to give."
"Yes, but it never contents a man," Bernadette complained. "Men are so exacting and so—so tempestuous." She broke into a little laugh, rather fretful.
"Now am I tempestuous?" Arthur asked, with a protesting gesture of his hands.
"Oh, you're not all the world, Arthur," she told him, just a little scornfully, but with a consoling pat on the arm. "You know what I mean, Miss Sarradet? They want things so definite—all in black and white! And if they can't have them like that, they tell you you're a shillyshallying sort of person without a mind and, as I say, get tempestuous about it."
Joe had regained some of his self-confidence. "If anybody bothers you like that, just you send him to me, Mrs. Lisle. I'll settle him!" His manner conveyed a jocose ferocity.
"I wish you would! I mean, I wonder if you could. They talk as if one's mind only existed to be made up—like a prescription. One's mind isn't a medicine! It's a—a—What is it, Arthur?"
"It's a faculty given us for the agreeable contemplation and appreciation of the world."
"Quite right!" declared Bernadette in emphatic approval. "That's exactly what I think."
"It would clearly promote your agreeable appreciation of the world to come to our first night, Mrs. Lisle," urged Joe.