Finally, "Do you mind talking your own shop, Mr. Huntingdon?" she asked.
"Not at all," replied Enoch eagerly. "Is there some aspect of my work that interests you?"
"I imagine that all of it would," said Diana. "But I was not thinking of your work as a Cabinet Official. I was thinking of you as Police Commissioner of New York."
Enoch looked surprised.
"Father wrote to me the other day," Diana went on, "and asked me to send him the collection of your speeches. I bought it at Brentano's and I don't mind telling you that it pinched the Johnstown lunches a good bit to do so, but it was worth it, for I read the book before mailing it."
"You're not hinting that I ought to reimburse you, are you?" demanded
Enoch, with a delighted chuckle.
"Well, no—we'll consider that the luncheon and this dinner square the Johnstown pinching, perhaps a trifle more. What I wanted to say was that it struck me as worth comment that after you ceased being Police Commissioner, you never again talked of the impoverished boyhood of America. And yet you were a very successful Commissioner, were you not?"
Enoch looked from Diana out over the balcony rail to the fountain that twinkled in the little park.
"One of the most difficult things in public life," he said slowly, "is to hew straight to the line one laid out at the beginning."
"I should think," Diana suggested, "that the difficulty would depend on what the line was. A man who goes into politics to make himself rich, for example, might easily stick to his original purpose."