"Do explain this," she begged him, with a comical expression of dismay. "Why is it red?"
"I should say because, fundamentally, it is red mullet. It would never occur to me to inquire more deeply into it; but the rest is probably accounted for by the carte, if you understand French. Don't you think you had better approach it, fasting and with faith?"
"Go on about your appetite, please; it is so awfully entertaining," resumed Katharine. "I believe, if you found yourself really hungry one day, force of habit would still make you eat your lunch as though you didn't want it a bit. Now, wouldn't it?"
"My dear Miss Katharine, you have yet to learn that hunger does not give you a desire for more food, but merely imparts an element of pleasure to it. Go on with your fish, or else the entrée will catch you up."
"I am glad," said Katharine, in the interval between the courses, "that I'm not a superior person like you. It must be so lonely, isn't it?"
"What wine will you drink? White or red?" asked Paul severely.
"Living with you," continued Katharine, leaning back and looking mischievously at what was visible of him over the wine list, "must be exactly like living with Providence."
"Number five," said Paul to the waiter, laying down the wine list. Then he looked at her, and shook his head reprovingly.
"You see you don't live with me, do you?" he said drily.
"No," retorted Katharine hastily. "I live with sixty-three working gentlewomen, and that is a very different matter."