"Are you complimenting me on my tact or on the lack of it?"
"Oh, don't be a beast, Jennifer. I've said all I could think of"
"I guessed you would! If only you'd sometimes try to say the things you couldn't think of it would be much safer. And of course he"
"Well, he did." Slicker wriggled. "Maybe you could get Heriot to do something. I won't ask him. He's such a jeering, sneering brute"
"And you'd sooner I was sneered at than you?"
"Oh, come off the roof! What a little cat you are to-night." Slicker slid down beside her on the rug. "See here, honey. This is a serious matter. He's crazy for her. Crazy for her. He's letting go of everything. We men are like that sometimes," said Slicker in the wisdom of his twenty-one years. "We will drop through the bottom of all things to get what we want, and we never think how we're going to get out. Tempest is just beginning to realise that he's dropped in. But I don't know if he's reckoned up the shame he'll put on himself and his uniform before he climbs out—if he ever does."
"Mr. Tempest will never shame anything or anybody but those who are wicked enough to accuse him of doing it."
"Sakes," said Slicker admiringly. "What a refreshment you are, honey. Why, you see, there are plenty of fellows ready to sneer at religion and law and all the other things that Tempest used to stand for. Dick Heriot's one. So can't you realise what a peg he's giving them to hang their sneers on? Tempest was—well, he was about the genuine article. Now he's a fool. He forgets most things, and doesn't bother about the rest. He isn't Tempest any more. It's the fault of the life up here, of course. A man sees so few possible women"
"You brat! How dare you attempt to judge men like him and—and anyone else? You ought to go east again now your lung's healed. I shall write to Uncle Gerald and tell him you spend all your time carrying scandal"
"By Heavens, Jennifer! You're enough to make a toad spit"
