"I wonder," he said slowly, looking earnestly at his folded hands, "whether you'll put the worst interpretation on what I'm going to say."
Amory waited. She dropped the satiny-white upper arm. Mr. Strong resumed, more slowly still—
"It's this. We're risking things. Cosimo's risking his money, but he may be risking more than that. And if he risks it, so do I."
Into Amory's pretty face had come the look of the woman who prefers men to take risks rather than to talk about them.—"What do you risk?" she asked in tones that once more chilled Mr. Strong.
"Well, for one thing, a prosecution. Prang's rather a whole-hogger. It's what I said before—we want to use him, not have him use us."
"Oh?" said Amory with a faint smile. "And can't you manage Mr. Prang?"
There was no doubt at all in Mr. Strong's mind what that meant. "Because if you can't," it plainly meant, "I dare say we can find somebody who can." Without any qualification whatever, she really was beginning to be a little disappointed in him. She wondered how Cleopatra or the Queen of Sheba would have felt (had such a thing been conceivable) if, when that carpet had been carried by the Nubians into her lover's presence and unrolled, Antony or whatever his name was had blushed and turned away, too faint-hearted to take the gift the gods offered him? Risks! Weren't—Indian policies—worth a little risk?...
Besides, no doubt Cosimo was still with Britomart Belchamber....
She put her hands behind her head again and gave a little laugh.
Well, (as Edgar Strong himself might have put it in the days when his conversation had been slangier than it was now), it was up to him to make good pretty quickly or else to say good-bye to the editorship of a rag that at least did one bit of good in the world—paid Edgar Strong six pounds a week. And if it must be done it must, that was all. Damn it!...