“Why, pray?”
“Because they know that as good as overcoming is skill in effacing recollection of being overcome, and turn their attention to that entirely.”
“I am wrong again, of course.”
“Perhaps your wrong is more pleasing than their right.”
“I don’t quite know whether you mean that, or whether you are laughing at me,” she said, looking doubtingly at him, yet inclining to accept the more flattering interpretation. “I am almost sure you think it vanity in me to think I am a match for you. Well, if you do, I say that vanity is no crime in such a case.”
“Well, perhaps not. Though it is hardly a virtue.”
“Oh yes, in battle! Nelson’s bravery lay in his vanity.”
“Indeed! Then so did his death.”
Oh no, no! For it is written in the book of the prophet Shakespeare—
‘Fear and be slain? no worse can come to fight;
And fight and die, is death destroying death!’