"How?"
"Why not frivol with Josephine?"
"Good heavens!" he exclaimed. "A man can't get gay with a girl like that! You might as well try to two-step with the Statue of Liberty! You might as well play the Doxology on a jazz band! You might as well give a burnt-cork show on the Acropolis! You might as——"
"Calm your alarm," said I. "That girl, Josephine Vannis, is rather an overwhelming beauty, I admit. But it's just those big, handsome, impressive, monumentally magnificent girls who fall for some little squirt——"
"Who the devil do you mean!" he demanded, hotly.
"I don't mean you. But you are shorter than she is; you don't weigh as much. Get a move on you! Inject pep into yourself. Become witty, gay, degagé, inconsequential, brilliant, light-hearted, bristling with quips and epigrams——"
"Who? I?"
"Certainly. Pull yourself up short. Eliminate every moral instinct. Drink more Moselle than you ought to. Hook arms with that brace of kings down stairs and pull your hat over one eye! Then, after you've been the life of the dinner-party, drop into the kitchen and bestow a few repartees on Josephine. And if Clelia isn't shocked I'm a boche!"
"I can't do all those things," he said uneasily.
"You can try."