‘I am convinced he is asleep. It is not quite one o’clock, and you arrived in the night, didn’t you?’
‘Yes; but he will get up, because he will want to be off to Monte Carlo. He will spend his life there and send over expresses every hour for fresh rouleaux. When he is near a gaming-table he is so happy.’
‘Enviable faculty!’
‘It is my faculty too. But I try against it; he doesn’t. Men never try to resist anything.’
Geraldine murmured words to the effect that his life was one long compulsory resistance, and his eyes completed the uncomplete sentences.
‘Don’t talk nonsense,’ said his hostess. ‘You know I do not like madrigaux; and an Englishman always looks so clumsy when he is making them. Make me a cigarette instead.’
‘Always cruel!’ murmured her companion, obediently rolling up Turkish tobacco.
‘Always kind,’ said the Princess. ‘People who are kind to men and children never spoil them. Where will your schooner stay? There is no dock, or quay, or whatever you call it, here. These places always ought to have one of their own.’
‘How can they when the rocks go sheer down into deep water? No, I must keep her off Villefranche or Monaco. She can be round in half an hour—at your disposition, of course, like her owner.’
‘If she be not more manageable than her owner——’