So if a ship could be launched, apparently, not by a mere material knocking away of the thingummy, but by the timeless beauty of a face, an Indian policy ought not to present more difficulties. At all events it was worth trying. Perhaps "trying" was not exactly the word. These things happened or they didn't happen. But anybody not entirely stupid would know what Amory meant. The maid lighted the little lamp under the water-vessel that kept the muffins hot and then withdrew. Amory turned languidly to Mr. Strong. "Would you mind pouring out the tea? I'm so lazy," she said. She had put her feet up on the sofa, and her hands were clasped behind her head. The attitude allowed the wide-sleeved tea-gown into which she had changed to fall away from her upper arm, showing her satiny triceps. The studio was warm; it might be well to open the window a little; and Amory, from her sofa, gave the order. It seemed to her that she had not given orders enough from sofas. She had been doing too much of the work herself instead of lying at her ease and stilly willing it to be done. She knew better now. It was much better to take a leaf out of the book of _les grandes maitresses_. She recognized that she ought to have done that long ago. So Mr. Strong brought her tea, and then returned to his footstool again, where he ate enormous mouthfuls of muffin, spreading anchovy-paste over them, and drank great gulps of tea. He fairly made a meal of it. But Amory ate little, and allowed her tea to get cold. The cast which Stan had coarsely called "the fore-quarter" had been hung up on the wall at the sofa's end, and her eyes were musingly upon it. The trotter lay out of sight behind her. "Well, about that thing of Prang's," said Mr. Strong when he could eat no more. "Hadn't we better be settling about it?" "Don't shout across the room," said Amory languidly, and perhaps a little pettishly. She was wondering what was the matter with her hand that Mr. Strong had not kissed it when he had said good afternoon. He had kissed it on a former occasion. "Head bad?" said Mr. Strong. "No, my head's all right, but there's no reason we should edit the 'Novum' from the house-tops." "Was I raising my voice? Sorry." Mr. Strong rose from his footstool and took up a station between the tea-table and the asbestos log.