shrewd assailants, or indifferent to their attacks, for all his defensive
measures were against the cold. He was muffled in a superbly mounted
bearskin, which came up so closely about his ears that Arabella had to
repeat to him all her questions, and as it were force a way for her voice
through the hide. This was provoking, since it not only stemmed the
natural flow of conversation, but prevented her imagination from
decorating the reminiscence of it subsequently (which was her profound
secret pleasure), besides letting in the outer world upon her. Take it
as an axiom, when you utter a sentimentalism, that more than one pair of
ears makes a cynical critic. A sentimentalism requires secresy. I can
enjoy it, and shall treat it respectfully if you will confide it to me
alone; but I and my friends must laugh at it outright.

"Does there not seem a soul in the moonlight?" for instance. Arabella,
after a rapturous glance at the rosy orb, put it to Mr. Pericles, in
subdued impressive tones. She had to repeat her phrase; Mr. Pericles
then echoing, with provoking monotony of tone, "Sol?"--whereupon "Soul!"
was reiterated, somewhat sharply: and Mr. Pericles, peering over the
collar of the bear, with half an eye, continued the sentence, in the
manner of one sent thereby farther from its meaning: "Ze moonlight?"
Despairing and exasperated, Arabella commenced afresh: "I said, there
seems a soul in it"; and Mr. Pericles assented bluntly: "In ze light!"--
which sounded so little satisfactory that Arabella explained, "I mean the
aspect;" and having said three times distinctly what she meant, in answer
to a terrific glare from the unsubmerged whites of the eyes of Mr.
Pericles, this was his comment, almost roared forth:

"Sol! you say so-whole--in ze moonlight--Luna? Hein? Ze aspect is of
Sol!--Yez."