"Oh I say now! cut it out, can't you?" Pagan hastily remonstrated. "Why not be a sport, call that little skirmish of ours the fortunes of war, and let it go at that? No end of water has flowed down the Hudson since that night when you cut up so nasty—about nothing at all, practically—Morph here had to give you a taste of the whip. Not that he wanted to, but you asked for it, Lanyard—and you know you did!"
"But truly, monsieur, this grows fatiguing . . ."
"Everything's so different tonight," Pagan brightly argued. "We've all been through so much, we know one another heaps better—there isn't any sense at all in our keeping on at loggerheads."
"There is not?"
"Why! if the last half year has proved anything it's that we're all travelling one road, aiming at the same mark . . . Or shall we say marks, so long as the dear American people ain't listening in? . . . And now we've all made our mistakes and are ready to admit and profit by them—you're going to cut out all this running round in circles and frothing at the mouth, going to come in and lie down under the table and be a good dog."
"I am?"
"Sure thing. Ask Morph: he knows. And you will, too, before long, if you don't now. And then we'll all be just like this"—Pagan illustrated by lacing his fingers—"just girls together, you know, all out for a good time. So why not begin the peace conference with just one friendly little hooter? It'll do us both good: you've had a hard day of it, and you've given us a hard night."
"It desolates me, monsieur, to think I have been, however unwittingly, the agent of your martyrdom to insomnia."
"Well: what did you think?" Giving up the ungrateful work of trying to seduce Lanyard into tippling, Pagan philosophically mixed himself a lonely solace. "Didn't suppose we'd be able to sleep a wink, did you, when you'd got us all excited up?"
"I! but how?"