"Indeed!" she exclaimed. "How very curious! But then there is no hiding anything from you clever men!"
"Oh yes, yes. For example, which of the two suitors succeeded--the older and younger, or the newer and older?"
"Charming! Charming! An exquisite play on the words. What a suitable language yours is for that kind of thing, in the hands of a real master, I mean. Ah! which succeeds? Why, the former, of course!"
"I should scarcely have considered it such a matter of course. I should not be surprised if, for all that, the young lady's feelings for him had never again recovered the former degree of warmth. Your beautiful and clever friend, I admire her extremely, but--do not be angry with me for what I am going to say--but I had, during your description of her, always to think of Circe. There was only one man who left the palace of the sorceress with absolute impunity, and he only by the aid of a certain herb a god had given him. Now, young and ardent officers are not said to meet the god very frequently."
"But I really cannot make the story anything different from what it truly was like," cried the Princess, half pouting, half laughing.
"Certainly not; but what became of the man who was no longer young? How bore he the loss of hopes to which he had clung all the more tenaciously because he had not many more to lose?"
"That, as a punishment for your scepticism, you are to say yourself."
"How can I? Had he been a poet he might have written a novel, after the manner of the 'Elective Affinities,' and thus cleared his soul from the purgatory of jealousy and humiliation. But being no poet ..."
"How do you know that?"
"I assume it. I am driven to assume things, am I not?"