Saraïde fidgeted. And what now came out of her own angelic mouth was a yawn.
“Truth is not easily found,” her Kerin continued. “The truth is hard to come to: roses and truth have thorns about them.”
“Perhaps,” said Saraïde. “But against banalities a married woman has no protection whatever!”
“Yet truth,” now Kerin went on with his kindly encouragement, “may languish, but can never perish. Isidore of Seville records the fine saying that, though malice may darken truth, it cannot put it out.”
“Husband of mine,” said Saraïde, “sometimes I find your wisdom such that I wonder how I ever came to marry you!”
But Kerin waved aside her tribute modestly. “It is merely that I, too, admire the truth. For truth is the best buckler. Truth never grows old. Truth, in the words of Tertullian, seeks no corners. Truth makes the devil blush.”
“Good Lord!” said Saraïde. And for no reason at all she stamped her foot.
“—So everybody, in whatsoever surroundings, ought to be as truthful as I am now, my pet, in observing that this hour is considerably past our usual hour for supper, and that I have had rather a hard day of it—”
But Saraïde had gone from him, as if in meditation, toward the curbing about the great and bottomless Well of Ogde. “Among these general observations, about devils and bucklers and supper time, I find only one which may perhaps be helpful. Truth lies, you tell me, at the bottom of a well just such as this well.”
“That is the contention alike of Cleanthes and of Democritos the derider.”