"Well, then—can't you leave the lady to discourage him in her own way?"
"She won't go to the ho-tel, because she hates Ching Po. But she walks out with him Sunday afternoons. He gives her gimcracks."
"Then she likes him?"
"There's no telling. She's a real lady." And the discouraged Stires beat, with his spanner, a refrain to his involuntary epigram.
"She can take care of herself, can't she?" I had watched her deal with a drunken Solomon Islander, and did not see how Schneider could be a match for her.
"I don't know." Stires's lazy drawl challenged the sunset.
"Anything I can do?" I asked as I rose.
"Unless you go in and cut him out," he meditated with a grin.
"But I'm not in love with her," I protested.
"You might take her to church."