"None the less your chastity, however unusual, has proved a barren virtue. For what have you made of a year of youth? Why, each thing that every man of forty-odd by ordinary regrets having done, you have done again, only more swiftly, compressing the follies of a quarter of a century into the space of one year. You have sought bodily pleasures. You have made jests. You have asked many idle questions. And you have doubted all things, including Jurgen. In the face of your memories, in the face of what you probably considered cordial repentance, you have made of your second youth just nothing. Each thing that every man of forty-odd regrets having done, you have done again."
"Yes: it is undeniable that I re-married," said Jurgen. "Indeed, now I think of it, there was Anaïtis and Chloris and Florimel, so that I have married thrice in one year. But I am largely the victim of heredity, you must remember, since it was without consulting me that Smoit of Glathion perpetuated his characteristics."
"Your marriages I do not criticize, for each was in accordance with the custom of the country: the law is always respectable; and matrimony is an honorable estate, and has a steadying influence, in all climes. It is true my shadow reports several other affairs—"
"Oh, godmother, and what is this you are telling me!"
"There was a Yolande and a Guenevere"—the voice of Mother Sereda appeared to read from a memorandum,—"and a Sylvia, who was your own step-grandmother, and a Stella, who was a yogini, whatever that may be; and a Phyllis and a Dolores, who were the queens of Hell and Philistia severally. Moreover, you visited the Queen of Pseudopolis in circumstances which could not but have been unfavorably viewed by her husband. Oh, yes, you have committed follies with divers women."
"Follies, it may be, but no crimes, not even a misdemeanor. Look you, Mother Sereda, does your shadow report in all this year one single instance of misconduct with a woman?" says Jurgen, sternly.
"No, dearie, as I joyfully concede. The very worst reported is that matters were sometimes assuming a more or less suspicious turn when you happened to put out the light. And, of course, shadows cannot exist in absolute darkness."
"See now," said Jurgen, "what a thing it is to be careful! Careful,
I mean, in one's avoidance of even an appearance of evil. In what
other young man of twenty-one may you look to find such continence?
And yet you grumble!"
"I do not complain because you have lived chastely. That pleases me, and is the single reason you have been spared this long."
"Oh, godmother, and whatever are you telling me!"