The girl looked suddenly up into his face, and again he saw in her expressive eyes a look which was altogether new. Like flashes of lightning the changes passed over her small, mobile features, to which the absence of even a tinge of healthy pink color gave, perhaps, an added power of portraying the emotions which might be agitating her. There was now something like defiance in her eyes.
"What was your boldness compared to mine?" said she. "You are a man; you have strong arms, at any rate, I suppose. I am only a girl, and you are a gentleman, and gentlemen are not chivalrous. Who dared the most then, you or I?"
"So gentlemen are not chivalrous?" said Max, ignoring the last part of her speech. "All gentlemen are not, I suppose you mean? Or rather, all the men who ought to be gentlemen?"
"No," answered the girl, stubbornly. "I mean what I said. You with the rest. You'd act rightly toward a man, I suppose, as a matter of course. You can't act rightly toward a woman, a girl, without expecting to be paid for it."
Max was taken aback. Here was a change, indeed, from the poor, clinging, pleading, imploring creature of twenty minutes before. He reddened a little and let her hand slip from his grasp.
"I believe you are right," he said, at last, "though you are rather severe. But let me tell you that the word 'chivalry' is misleading altogether. It is applied to those middle-aged Johnnies—no, I mean those Johnnies of the Middle Ages—who were supposed to go about rescuing damsels in distress, isn't it? Well, you don't know what happened after the rescue was effected; but I like to suppose, myself, that the girl didn't just say 'Thanks—awfully' and cut him dead forever afterward."
"You think the knight expected payment, just as you do, for his services?"
"I think so. A very small payment, but one which he would appreciate highly."
The girl leaned against the wall by the door and looked at him with something like contempt for a moment. Then she smiled, not encouragingly, but with mockery in her eyes.
"You have a tariff, I suppose," said she, cuttingly, "a regular scale of charges, as, perhaps, you will say the knights had. Pray, what is your charge in the present instance? A kiss, perhaps, or two?"