"I wish more men had convictions," she said. "Even when I don't agree. Everybody respects everybody else's sensibilities so much these days, there's nothing left to talk about but football scores."
"You're very kind," he said. "Ah, here come the appetizers. Pay special attention to the characteristically Dutch delicacy, Russian eggs, but don't ask me how they came by that name."
Later, after much talk, some of it with enough laughter to tell him she was a merry soul in better days:
A ruby spark lay in their glasses of Cherry Heering. "This isn't Dutch either," said Kintyre. "However."
"Do you know," she said, "I begin to understand the old idea of a wake. Getting the clan together and having one fine brawling celebration. It's more an act of love, really, than drawing the parlor curtains and talking in hushed voices."
"That's the Latin who speaks," he said. "We Protestant races are cursed with the tradition that misery is a virtue."
"But you, you Bostonian Scot or whatever you are—I hear a trace of accent—you approve."
"I left Boston for the Pacific at the arthritic age of nine."
"What was the reason for that?"