“Low-brow, she cannot die.”
The old hoax returned a confident leer. “That I grow more high-brow with every age let me demonstrate through a reminder of how the greatest roughness is the gentlest. What diverts you in her—her very virile hope—may die before that Day. Am I right or wrong in saying that you owe me, if not her, some consideration?”
“Wrong you are. You did throw me the acorn from which a giant oak may grow.”
“And hasn’t she sirened you along bad and improper? Hasn’t she been square with you?”
“Yes, she’s been square. There wasn’t a right angle to all the past Delilahs ever damned by man or me.”
Sin, with a wary eye fixed upon the Master of Malice, made for that end of the monk-board nearer the exit. The while he further ventured: “It isn’t necessarily lowering to Your Highness to say that you have more to learn than I anent the siren act. You can’t bully a dame into doting on you. The present-day caveman style is 40 H. P.—after you’ve got her. Before, a wise one coaxes her. And it isn’t enough to load her down with that stage jewelry of which you’re so prodigal, when you yourself don’t look to be, any more than you act to be, of her day and degeneration. Why not tog yourself up more in the likeness of this millionaire love-hound of hers? Summertime’s coming apace or I’m no weather prophet, so why not moth-ball the well-known Vandyke and those robes of the vintage of Sol-in-all-his-glory days?”
A snarl of stabbed vanity greeted the daring suggestion. Its cogency was demonstrated, however, when, in a lunge after the purveyor of unsolicited counsel, the King tripped over his train.
From the hall the minister primed his advices.
“As for your technique, soft-pedal yourself. Don’t keep blaring like a brass band at a lady who has fainted with fear of your noise.”
The slam of the door was the old impertinent’s period.