"Yes. He was certainly perspicacious. Where did you say you were going?"
Cassy removed her gloves. "Before I was attacked? To a music-shop. There
is a song I want to get for Mrs. Thingumagig's, Mrs. Beamish----"
"Mrs. Who?" Paliser asked. Again he had forgotten the lady. But from one
of memory's pantries her wraith peered out. "Ah, yes, of course! Well,
we can stop by for it and you can run it over in the country to-night.
You remember that you are to dine with me, don't you?"
Cassy lifted a lip as a dog does when about to bite. "Remember it, I
have thought of nothing else."
But now the waiter put a dish between them and Paliser said: "You make
me feel like this surprised tomato."
Then came the bite. "While you are about it, you can feel like both of
them. I am not going."
Argument weakens everything and wearies everybody--except the young. The
mouths of youth are naturally full of objections and insults. Were it
otherwise, young people would be too servile to the past, too respectful
to the present and the future would not know them as guides.
Paliser, young in years, but old at heart, omitted to argue. He did what
is perhaps superior, he changed the subject. "What is this song you were
speaking of? Why not try that thing of Rimsky-Korsakov, the 'Chanson
Hindoue'?"
Then, throughout that course and the courses that followed, peace
descended upon them. Even to talk music soothes the savage breast. It
soothed Cassy and to such an extent that, finally, when the ice came she
made no bones about admitting it was her favourite dish.
"Du cafe, monsieur? Des liqueurs?" the slacker asked.
But no, Paliser did not wish anything else, nor did Cassy. The ice
sufficed. She ate it slowly, a little forkful at a time, wishing that
her father could share it, wishing that he, too, could have sofa'd
supremes and some one to pay for them. She raised her napkin.
Paliser lit a cigarette and said: "You made no reply to that statement
of mine."