"Nice is comprehended in other pleasant--adjectives."
"It is?" said he, advancing slowly toward her.
"But you, Mr. Harleston, are forbidden to guess how pleasant, or the particular adjective, until you're permitted."
"And you'll permit me to guess some day--and soon."
"Maybe so--and maybe not!" she laughed. "It will depend on the both of us--and the business in hand. Diplomats, you are well aware, are given to very disingenuous ways and methods."
"In diplomacy," he appended. "A diplomat, as a rule, is merely a man of a little wider experience and more mature judgment--the American diplomat alone excepted, save in the secret service. Therefore he knows his mind, and what he wants; and he usually can be depended upon to keep after it until he gets it."
"And to want it after he gets it?" she inquired.
"I'm not. The world looks good to me, and I try to look good to the world."
"I've about-faced," she went on. "Now I presume everybody trustworthy until it's proven otherwise. Time was, and not so long ago, when I was more than cynical; and I found it didn't pay in a woman. A man may be cynical and get away with it; a woman only injures her complexion, and makes trouble for herself. Me for the happy spirit, and side-stepping the bumps."
"Good girl!" Harleston applauded--thinking of her unhappy spirit, and the hard bumps she must have endured during the time that the late deceased Clephane was whirling to an aeroplane finish. "You're a wonder, Mrs. Clephane," he ended.
"Aren't you afraid you'll make me vain?" she asked.
"It can't be done," he averred. "You simply can't be spoiled; you're much too sensible."
"La! la!" she trilled. "What a paragon of--"
"Everything that I must be, if you so wish it."
"Aren't you afraid of a paragon, Mr. Harleston?"
"La! la!" she trilled again. "You're becoming mystic; which means mysterious, which means diplomatic, which means deception--which warns us to get back to the simple life and have dinner. Want dinner, Mr. Harleston?"
"With you, yes; also breakfast and luncheon daily."
"You couldn't do that unless you were my husband," she replied tantalizingly and adorably.
"I'm perfectly aware of it," he responded, leaning forward over the back of the chair that separated them.