"You have known her all her life. Don't trouble yourself to speak, Lala. You can nod your head if there isn't a maxim ready. You began to lodge in the house twenty years ago, and you have seen her every day since. If she is not the best, as well as the most beautiful girl in the world, you ought to know and can contradict me. But you do know it."
"Happy is the man," said the Sage, "who shall call her wife; happy the children who shall call her mother."
"I suppose, Lala," Arnold went on with an ingenuous blush, "I suppose that you have perceived that—that—in fact—I love her."
The Philosopher inclined his head.
"Do you think—you who know her so well—that she suspects or knows it?"
"The thoughts of a maiden are secret thoughts. As well may one search for the beginnings of a river as inquire into the mind of a woman. Their ways are not our ways, nor are their thoughts ours, nor have we wit to understand, nor have they tongue to utter the things they think. I know not whether she suspects."
"Yet you have had experience, Lala Roy?"
A smile stole over the Sage's features.
"In the old days when I was young, I had experience, as all men have. I have had many wives. Yet to me, as to all others, the thoughts of the harem are unknown."