“She’ll not strike you as anything wonderful of course; but I know she’s as straight as they make ’em. And so long as she is––”
“Well, what then?”
“Why, then, it seems to me, we must be straight on our side.”
“We’ll be straight enough if we pay her her price.”
“There’s more to it than that.”
“Oh, there is? Then how much more?”
“I don’t know that I can explain it.” He lifted one of the Stiegel candlesticks and put it back in its place. “I simply feel that we can’t—that we can’t let all the 181 magnanimity be on her side. If she plays high, we’ve got to play higher.”
“I see. So she’s got you there, has she?”
“I wish you wouldn’t be disagreeable about it, Barbe.”
“My dear Rash,” she expostulated, “it isn’t being disagreeable to have common sense. It’s all the more necessary for me not to abnegate that, for the simple reason that you do.”