HE: Why so I do, lady, and therewith grieve for myself and thyself, myself being Fool and thyself a dame of high degree, thus, betwixt whiles, I do fear thee also.
SHE: Thou fear! Thou fear me forsooth! And wherefore fear a helpless maid?
HE: There is the reason—she is helpless!
SHE: Ah, there doth Fool speak like chivalrous knight.
HE: Or very fool—a fool that fain would win fair Dian from high heaven. Alas, poor Fool, that, being fool, must needs look and sigh and sigh and look and leave her to the winning of some young Endymion!
SHE (dreamily): Endymion was but lowly shepherd, yet was he loved!
HE: Endymion was fair youth comely of feature, lady. Now had he worn ass's ears 'bove visage scarred—how then? On Ida's mount he had been sighing forlorn and lonely yet, methinks. For maids' hearts are ever governed by their eyes—
SHE: Art so wise in maids' hearts, Joconde?
HE: Wise am I in this: No man may ever know the heart of a woman—and woman herself but seldom.
Now here was silence again wherein Yolande, smiling, viewed him a dim shape in the gloom, and he leaned back to watch a star that twinkled through the leafy canopy above.