“Yes; that doubtless too is good.” He continued to look at her patiently, as if he liked to consider that this might be what she had asked him to come for. He said nothing more, and she went on:
“It’s far better of course when one’s a man.”
“I don’t know. Women do pretty well what they like. My sister and you have managed, between you, to bring me to this.”
“It’s more your sister, I suspect, than I. But why, after all, should you have disliked so much to come?”
“Well, since you ask me,” said Paul Muniment, “I’ll tell you frankly, though I don’t mean it uncivilly, that I don’t know what to make of you.”
“Most people don’t,” returned the Princess. “But they usually take the risk.”
“Ah well, I’m the most prudent of men.”
“I was sure of it; that’s one of the reasons I wanted to know you. I know what some of your ideas are—Hyacinth Robinson has told me; and the source of my interest in them is partly the fact that you consider very carefully what you attempt.”
“That I do—I do,” he agreed.
The tone in which he said this would have been almost ignoble, as regards a kind of northern canniness latent in it, had it not been corrected by the character of his face, his youth and strength, his almost military eyes. The Princess recognised both the shrewdness and the natural ease as she rejoined: “To do anything in association with you would be very safe. It would be sure to succeed.”