“I am informed,” said Mellenger coolly, “that on your mother’s side you are descended from a line of kings who have never mingled their blood with that of the common people.”
“That is true.”
“I would that my friend refrained from mingling the blood of his children with that of another race, a race that is not white.”
She was silent, digesting this unanswerable argument. Then: “Some day, perhaps, Stoneface, you will cast away that argument. Like a child’s garment, it will not fit a grown man.”
Maisie came toward them. “We will go to our rooms now and dress for dinner, Tamea,” she suggested.
When he was alone in the lobby Mark Mellenger sat down in a quiet corner to think. “She bombs one,” he complained. “She fairly blows one out of the water. She will not be deferred to nor pitied nor patronized. Realizing why I am here—why I have found it necessary to be here—she renders me futile and my presence unnecessary by changing her tactics. She reads my poker face, and, having read it this evening, she has taken my job away from me and I feel foolish. Judas priest, what a woman! She’s perfectly tremendous! Fair and square, hitting straight from the shoulder and with character enough to dislike me intensely. She is adorably feminine and I’ve got my hands full to defeat her purpose. She isn’t going to plead with me to get out of her way, nor is she going to oppose me. She’s just going to ignore me. . . . Well, poor old Dan, I did the best I could by you, at any rate. The idealistic, altruistic dreamer. He’s helpless, because this girl possesses a charm that Maisie hasn’t got or hasn’t developed. Tamea can hear the pipes of Pan. That’s it! She can hear them and make men hear them, too.”
It did not occur to Mellenger that he liked reedy music.
CHAPTER XVIII
At dinner Tamea captured a seat beside Dan but gave it up almost instantly to Maisie, giving as a reason her desire to sit beside Mark Mellenger and talk with him. However, she had little to say during the meal. Seemingly she was content to be a good listener.
“Yes, she has been doing some thinking,” Mellenger thought. “And she has decided to disarm active opposition by abandoning direct action and fighting under the rules of the game as Maisie and her kind play it. Preëmpted the seat beside Dan and then abandoned it, just to show her power. She’s half French and a born coquette.”