"If you look at it in that way——"
"Jim! Don't be rude, either! I desire two things; I want a companion and I wish to oblige you. You know perfectly well I do.... Besides, the girl is interesting. You didn't expect me to sentimentalize over her, did you? You may do that if you like. As for me, I shall consider engaging her if she cares to come to me."
"She will be very glad to," he said, coolly.
Madame de Moidrey cast a swift side glance at him, full of curiosity and repressed amusement.
"Men," she said, "are the real sentimentalists in this matter-of-fact world, not women. Merely show a man a pretty specimen of the opposite sex in the conventional attitude of distress, and it unbalances his intellect immediately."
"Do you imagine that my youthful friend Philippa has unbalanced my intellect?" he asked impatiently.
"Not entirely. Not completely——"
"Nonsense!"
"What a bad-mannered creature you are, Jim! But fortunately you're something else, too. For example, you have been nice about this very unusual and somewhat perilously attractive young girl. Few men would have been so. Don't argue! I have known a few men in my time. And I pay you a compliment."
She stopped and leaned back against a weatherworn vase of stone which crowned the terrace parapet.