“And what was the end of the romance?” I asked.
“He borrowed twenty francs of me to pay for the dejeuner, and his l’annee trente delicacy of soul compelled him to blot my existence forever from his mind.”
“He never repaid you?” I asked.
“For a humouristic philosopher,” cried Judith, “you are delicious!”
Judith is too fond of that word “delicious.” She uses it in season and out of season.
We have the richest language that ever a people has accreted, and we use it as if it were the poorest. We hoard up our infinite wealth of words between the boards of dictionaries and in speech dole out the worn bronze coinage of our vocabulary. We are the misers of philological history. And when we can save our pennies and pass the counterfeit coin of slang, we are as happy as if we heard a blind beggar thank us for putting a pewter sixpence into his hat.
I said something of the sort to Judith, after she had resumed her seat and I had opened the window, the minstrel having wandered to the next hostelry, where the process of converting “Love’s Sweet Dream” into a nightmare was still faintly audible. Judith looked at me whimsically, as I stood breathing the comparatively fresh air and enjoying the relative silence.
“You are still the same, I am glad to see. Conversation with the young savage from Syria hasn’t altered you in the least.”
“In the first place,” said I, “savages do not grow in Syria; and in the second, how could she have altered me?”
“If the heavens were to open and the New Jerusalem to appear this moment before you,” retorted Judith, with the relevant irrelevance of her sex, “you would begin an unconcerned disquisition on the iconography of angels.”