“And no more do I, I suppose you mean.” “No more do you; but with you it’s different. If you would you could. However, it matters little who understands and who doesn’t, for all there happens to be of it. I’m not doing much, you know.” Rosy lay there looking up at him. “It must be pretty thick when you talk that way. However, I don’t care what you bring on, for I know I shall be looked after.” “Nothing’s going to happen—nothing’s going to happen,” Paul remarked simply. Her rejoinder to this was to say in a moment: “You’ve a different tone since you’ve taken up the Princess.” She spoke with a certain severity, but he broke out as if he hadn’t heard her: “I like your idea of the female aristocracy quarrelling over a dirty brute like me.” “I don’t know how dirty you are, but I know you smell of soap,” said his sister inexorably. “They won’t quarrel; that’s not the way they do it. Yes, you’re taking a different tone for some purpose I can’t discover just yet.” “What do you mean by that? When did I ever take a tone?” Paul demanded. “Why then do you speak as if you weren’t remarkable, immensely remarkable—more remarkable than anything any one, male or female, good or bad, of the aristocracy or of the vulgar sort, can ever do for you?” “What on earth have I ever done to show it?” he asked as with amusement. “Oh I don’t know your secrets, and that’s one of them. But we’re out of the common beyond any one, you and I, and between ourselves, with the door fastened, we might as well admit it.” “I admit it for you with all my heart!” the young man promptly laughed. “Well then if I admit it for you that’s all that’s required.” The pair considered themselves a while in silence, as if each were tasting agreeably the distinction the other conferred; then Muniment said: “If I’m such an awfully superior chap why shouldn’t I behave in keeping?” “Oh you do, you do!” “For all that you don’t like it.” “It isn’t so much what you do. It’s what _she_ does.” “How do you mean, what she does?” “She makes Lady Aurora suffer.” “Oh I can’t go into that,” said Paul. “A man feels such a muff, talking about the women who ‘suffer’ for him.” “Well, if they do it I think a man might bear it!” Rosy retorted. “That’s what a man _is_. When it comes to being sorry, oh that’s too ridiculous!” “There are plenty of things in the world I’m sorry for,” he patiently conceded. “One of them is that you should keep me gossiping here when I want to go out.” “Oh I don’t care if I worry her a little. Does she do it on purpose?” Rosy continued. “You ladies must settle all that together”—and he rubbed his hat with the cuff of his coat. It was a new one, the bravest he had ever possessed, and in a moment he put it on his head as if to re-enforce his reminder to his sister that it was time she should release him.