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 café, 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 suprêmes 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."
"Well, life comes first. I said you would have to marry me to pay for it. Will you?"
Cassy lowered the napkin. He was talking in jest she knew, or thought she knew, but the subject was not to her taste, though if he had been serious she would have disliked it still more. She wanted to give it to him, but no fitting insolence occurred to her and she turned to the window before which two Japanese were passing, with the air, certainly feigned, which these Asiatics display, of being hilarious and naïf.
Perhaps he did mean it, she thought. He was cheeky enough for anything. But now he was prodding her. "Say yes. Say to-morrow; say to-day."
She turned on him. "Why not yesterday? Or is it just another of your pearls of thought? You are simply ridiculous."