“You won’t take me seriously,” said the Princess. She spoke without irritation, without resentment, with a kind of resigned sadness. But there was a certain fineness of reproach in the tone in which she added, “I don’t believe you want to go at all.”
“Why else should I have come, especially if I don’t take you seriously?”
“That has never been a reason for a man’s not going to see a woman,” said the Princess. “It’s usually a reason in favour of it.”
Muniment turned his smiling eyes over the room, looking from one article of furniture to another: this was a way he had when he was engaged in a discussion, and it suggested not so much that he was reflecting on what his interlocutor said as that his thoughts were pursuing a cheerfully independent course. Presently he observed, “I don’t know that I quite understand what you mean by that question of taking a woman seriously.”
“Ah, you are very perfect,” murmured the Princess. “Don’t you consider that the changes you look for will be also for our benefit?”
“I don’t think they will alter your position.”
“If I didn’t hope for that, I wouldn’t do anything,” said the Princess.
“Oh, I have no doubt you’ll do a great deal.”
The young man’s companion was silent for some minutes, during which he also was content to say nothing. “I wonder you can find it in your conscience to work with me,” she observed at last.
“It isn’t in my conscience I find it,” said Muniment, laughing.