Madame de Moidrey smiled:
"No, it is a gentler quality—not devoid of sweetness. I think we may label it a becoming self-possession.... Anyway, it is a quality and not a trait—if that pleases you."
"She has quality."
"She has a candor which is almost disturbingly transparent. When I was a girl I saw Gilbert's comedy, 'The Palace of Truth.' And actually, I believe that your little friend, Philippa, could have entered that terrible house of unconscious self-revelation without any need of worrying."
"You couldn't praise her more sincerely if you think that," he said. "She offers virgin soil for anybody who will take any trouble with her."
"Oh," said Madame de Moidrey, laughing, "I thought I was to engage her to aid me and amuse me; but it seems that I have been engaged to educate her in the subtler refinements of civilized existence!"
"Don't you want to?" asked Warner, bluntly.
"Dear friend of many more years than I choose to own to, have I not enough to occupy me without adopting a wandering caissière de cabaret?"
"Is that the way you feel?" he said, reddening.
"Don't be cross! No; it isn't the way I feel. I do need a companion. Perhaps your friend Philippa is not exactly the companion I might have dreamed about or aspired to——"