"To that there are several answers," replied the King. "One is that I remember my late wife as tenderly as possible, and I reflect I have only her word for it as to Guenevere's being my daughter. Another is that, though my daughter is a quiet and well-conducted young woman, I never heard King Thragnar was anything of this sort."
"Oh, sir," said Jurgen, horrified, "whatever are you hinting!"
"All sorts of things, however, happen in caves, things which it is wiser to ignore in sunlight. So I ignore: I ask no questions: my business is to marry my daughter acceptably, and that only. Such discoveries as may be made by her husband afterward are his affair, not mine. This much I might tell you, Messire de Logreus, by way of answer. But the real answer is to bid you consider this: that a woman's honor is concerned with one thing only, and it is a thing with which the honor of a man is not concerned at all."
"But now you talk in riddles, King, and I wonder what it is you would have me do."
Gogyrvan grinned. "Obviously, I advise you to give thanks you were born a man, because that sturdier sex has so much less need to bother over breakage."
"What sort of breakage, sir?" says Jurgen.
Gogyrvan told him.
Duke Jurgen for the second time looked properly horrified. "Your aphorisms, King, are abominable, and of a sort unlikely to quiet my misery. However, we were speaking of your daughter, and it is she who must be considered rather than I."
"Now I perceive that you take my meaning perfectly. Yes, in all matters which concern my daughter I would have you lie like a gentleman."
"Well, I am afraid, sir," said Jurgen, after a pause, "that you are a person of somewhat degraded ideals."