“Well! Perhaps I need not go so far as that,” he remarked, mildly.
“No!” And her voice was very sweet and thrilling. “I don’t think you should—if you are really a wise man—go so far as that!”
He drew his pipe slowly from his mouth—it was out again. He looked at it forlornly, and put it in his pocket. He realised that they had mutually crossed swords, and that she held him at the point of her steel. But he rose to the occasion and slipped his arm coaxingly through hers.
“Let us talk about the weather!” he said, cheerfully. “It’s a beautiful day!”
“Lovely!” she answered.
“And you are not a Nagger?”
“I hope not!”
“You will not tell me you are a martyr to the cause of—”
“Philosophy?” she suggested.
He laughed good-humouredly.