Edna resolved to bear herself with all the dignity of a Queen's daughter. She sat up and felt for her pince-nez, and, discovering that it was intact, she adjusted it on her nose. "Considering," she said, "that all is at an end between us, you had no right whatever to send your dragon to bring me here. It was a thing that no gentleman would have done!"
"Wouldn't that great and learned gentleman you told me of—the one whose name I always forget—have done it?" he inquired.
"Nietzsche," said Edna, instructively superior even in such a crisis; "most certainly not. Even if he had owned a dragon!"
"You told me he did," he insisted; "a great meta-something dragon that talked and said, 'Thou shalt not.' But if he wouldn't send his dragon for anybody, he would approve of my sending mine for you, because I was doing as he advised, and acting exactly as I thought fit."
She realised the hopelessness of reasoning with him. "You thought fit to act most improperly," she said severely, "and you will gain nothing by it, you know!"
"Oh, yes I shall," he said, "or I shouldn't have done it."
"You are quite mistaken," she assured him, "if you are imagining I shall ever consent to renew our engagement now I know what you are."
"I'm what you wanted me to be," he said, "a Superman."
"You're not, you're an—an Ogre. I couldn't possibly bring myself to become an Ogress!"
"You wouldn't make much of an Ogress," he said dispassionately. "You haven't the build for it. But I'm not an Ogre even yet. It's not my fault. I meant to begin with those pages of yours—but you all seemed to have some ridiculous objections. Then I've sent Tützi out to forage and pick up a small child or two, but the peasants round here are so selfish and unneighbourly that they never give him the chance—actually shutting all the children up indoors!"