“It was not the symbolism I objected to, Florian, but the endless inconvenience. The tournaments were only a part of it; and of course even after them you could get liniment, and you soon learned not to drink anything with your breakfast. But they walked off with your sleeves and handkerchiefs, with or without your leave: and when you go to put on your gloves, let me tell you, it is most annoying to find that the other one is several miles away in somebody’s helmet—”
“Now,” Florian said, yet more and more shocked, “you illogically apply prosaic standards to the entirely poetic attitude of chivalry—”
“Oh, as for their poetry, telling what marvelous creatures they thought us, they were all over the place with it. That was trying enough in the day-time: but when it came to being waked up long before dawn, and prevented from getting a wink of beauty-sleep at night, by their aubades and serenas about how wonderful you were, I do assure you, it was really very tiresome—”
“I can see that.” Logic compelled the admission, however repulsive it was to find a woman blundering into logic. “But, still, madame—”
“Yes, you can see that, Florian, now, because you now comprehend you have been as foolishly exaggerative as any of them. Florian, you are a romantic: and from the first that has been the trouble, because it was that which made you fall in love with your notion of Melior. That was just what you did, without even having talked with me—”
“Parbleu, but certainly it was without having heard you talk—”
“And as far as it went, it was quite nice of you, Florian, for you appear even to have imperilled your soul—which, to be sure, must have been in a rather dangerous way already,—through your desire to have me for your wife. Nobody thinks of denying that was a very pretty compliment, but, if you ask me, it was a mistake—”
This seemed to Florian such a masterpiece in the art of understatement that he said almost sullenly, “We needs must love the highest—”
“Nonsense, Florian, I am far from being the highest. And so, let me tell you, is any other woman. After a month or two of sleeping with and mooning around me,—who, you must do me the justice to admit, never laughed at you once, though I do not deny that I was tempted, for, Florian, my dear, it seems only fair to tell you that at times you are simply—! But then, it is not as if other men were very different—”
“Let us,” said Florian,—who was reflecting that he had never really detested anybody before he met this woman,—“let us turn to more profitable topics than masculine romanticism—”