and with appropriate gestures, too. But, dompnedex, madame! I am past
master in these specious ecstasies, for somehow I have rarely seen the
woman who had not some charm or other to catch my heart with. I confess
now that you alone have never quickened it. My only purpose was through
hyperbole to wheedle you out of a horse, and meanwhile to have my
recreation, you handsome jade!--and that is all you ever meant to me. I
swear to you that is all, all, all!" sobbed Perion, for it appeared
that he must die. "I have amused myself with you, I have abominably
tricked you--"

Melicent only waited with untroubled eyes which seemed to plumb his
heart and to appraise all which Perion had ever thought or longed for
since the day that Perion was born; and she was as beautiful, it seemed
to him, as the untroubled, gracious angels are, and more compassionate.

"Yes," Perion said, "I am trying to lie to you. And even at lying I
fail."

She said, with a wonderful smile:

"Assuredly there were never any other persons so mad as we. For I must
do the wooing, as though you were the maid, and all the while you
rebuff me and suffer so that I fear to look on you. Men say you are no
better than a highwayman; you confess yourself to be a thief: and I
believe none of your accusers. Perion de la Foret," said Melicent, and
ballad-makers have never shaped a phrase wherewith to tell you of her
voice, "I know that you have dabbled in dishonour no more often than an
archangel has pilfered drying linen from a hedgerow. I do not guess,
for my hour is upon me, and inevitably I know! and there is nothing
dares to come between us now."