'The reasoning is not pure enough. If I had been so sent, should I have been pursued and hunted? And should I not have come prepared with some trivial message, to assure you that I am the messenger you were so very ready to believe me?'
She was convinced. But still she hesitated.
'But why, concluding so much and so accurately, should you offer to serve me?'
'Say from gratitude to one who has saved perhaps my life.'
'But I did so under a misapprehension. That should compel no gratitude.'
'I like to think, madonna, that you would have shown me the same charity even if there had been no misapprehension. I am the more grateful for what you have done because I choose to believe that in any case you would have done it. Then there is this handsome suit to be paid for, and, lastly and chiefly, the desire to serve a lady in need of service, which I believe is not an altogether strange desire in a man of sensibility. It has happened aforetime.'
That was as near as he would go to the confession that she had beglamoured him. Since it was a state of mind that did not rest upon pure reason, it is one to which he would have been reluctant to confess even to himself.
She pondered him, and it seemed to him that her searching glance laid bare all that he was and all that he was likely to be.
'These are slight and unworldly reasons,' she said at last.
'I am possibly an unworldly fellow.'