.

.

.

Soon, with a carefully pleasant smile, she was attending to his talk and by her questions drawing out more and more of his life abroad.
"His work," she thought, "that's the strongest thing to hold his mind away from those people." And soon she had him talking of the Beaux Arts, architecture, plans and "periods" and "styles," things she was quite vague about, but she did not have to listen now.

That was always so safe, she told herself.