"Your if? If he had, it would have been an act of condescension."
"You are too slippery."
"Stay, dear Laetitia. He was considerate in forbearing to pain me."
"That is an answer. You allowed him to perceive that it would have pained you."
"Dearest, if I may convey to you what I was, in a simile for comparison: I think I was like a fisherman's float on the water, perfectly still, and ready to go down at any instant, or up. So much for my behaviour."
"Similes have the merit of satisfying the finder of them, and cheating the hearer," said Laetitia. "You admit that your feelings would have been painful."
"I was a fisherman's float: please admire my simile; any way you like, this way or that, or so quiet as to tempt the eyes to go to sleep. And suddenly I might have disappeared in the depths, or flown in the air. But no fish bit."
"Well, then, to follow you, supposing the fish or the fisherman, for I don't know which is which . . . Oh! no, no: this is too serious for imagery. I am to understand that you thanked him at least for his reserve."
"Yes."
"Without the slightest encouragement to him to break it?"