"It's pretty—very pretty and touching—and all that sort of thing," he said at last—"but it's like some old sonnet or mediaeval bit of romance. No one would go on like that nowadays."
Innocent lifted her eyebrows, quizzically.
"Go on like what?"
He moved impatiently.
"Oh, about being patient in solitude with one's soul, and saying farewell to love." He gave a short laugh. "Innocent dear, I wish you would see the world as it really is!—not through the old-style spectacles of the Sieur Amadis! In his day people were altogether different from what they are now."
"I'm sure they were!" she answered, quietly—"But love is the same to-day as it was then."
He considered a moment, then smiled.
"No, dear, I'm not sure that it is," he said. "Those knights and poets and curious people of that kind lived in a sort of imaginary ecstasy—they exaggerated their emotions and lived at the top-height of their fancies. We in our time are much more sane and level-headed. And it's much better for us in the long run."
She made no reply. Only very gently she withdrew her hand from his.
"I'm not a knight of old," he went on, turning his handsome, sun-browned face towards her,—"but I'm sure I love you as much as ever the Sieur Amadis could have loved his unknown lady. So much indeed do I love you that I couldn't write about it to save my life!—though I did write verses at Oxford once—very bad ones!" He laughed. "But I can do one thing the Sieur Amadis didn't do—I can keep faithful to my Vision of the glory unattainable'—and if I don't marry you I'll marry no-body—so there!"