"There is something in what you advance—"
"There is a great deal in what I advance, I can assure you. It is the most natural and most penetrating kind of logic; and I wish merely to discharge a duty—"
"But you upset me, with that big sword of yours, you make me
nervous, and I cannot argue so long as you are flourishing it about.
Come now, put up your sword! Oh, what is anybody to do with you!
Here is the sheath for your sword," says she.
At this point they were interrupted.
"Duke of Logreus," says the voice of Dame Anaïtis, "do you not think it would be better to retire, before such antics at the door of my bedroom give rise to a scandal?"
For Anaïtis had half-opened the door of her bedroom, and with a lamp in her hand, was peering out into the narrow stairway. Jurgen was a little embarrassed, for his apparent intimacy with a lady who had been dead for sixty-three years would be, he felt, a matter difficult to explain. So Jurgen rose to his feet, and hastily put up the weapon he had exhibited to Queen Sylvia, and decided to pass airily over the whole affair. And outside, a cock crowed, for it was now dawn.
"I bid you a good morning, Dame Anaïtis," said Jurgen. "But the stairways hereabouts are confusing, and I must have lost my way. I was going for a stroll. This is my distant relative Queen Sylvia Tereu, who kindly offered to accompany me. We were going out to gather mushrooms and to watch the sunrise, you conceive."
"Messire de Logreus, I think you had far better go back to bed."
"To the contrary, madame, it is my manifest duty to serve as Queen
Sylvia's escort—"
"For all that, messire, I do not see any Queen Sylvia."