"Nay,--ho, and even were matters as you suppose them, without any
warrant,--there is at least one silly stumbling knave that dares as
much. Saith he: 'What is the most precious thing in the world?--Why,
assuredly, Dame Melicent's welfare. Let me get the keeping of it, then.
For I have been entrusted with a host of common priceless things--with
youth and vigour and honour, with a clean conscience and a child's
faith, and so on--and no person alive has squandered them more
gallantly. So heartward ho! and trust me now, my timorous yoke-fellow,
to win and squander also the chiefest jewel of the world.' Eh, thus he
chuckles and nudges me, with wicked whisperings. Indeed, madame, this
rascal that shares equally in my least faculty is a most pitiful,
ignoble rogue! and he has aforetime eked out our common livelihood by
such practices as your unsullied imagination could scarcely depicture.
Until I knew you I had endured him. But you have made of him a horror.
A horror, a horror! a thing too pitiful for hell!"

Perion turned away from her, groaning. He flung himself into a chair.
He screened his eyes as if before some physical abomination.

The girl kneeled close to him, touching him.

"My dear, my dear! then slay for me this other Perion of the Forest."

And Perion laughed, not very mirthfully.

"It is the common usage of women to ask of men this little labour,
which is a harder task than ever Hercules, that mighty-muscled king of
heathenry, achieved. Nay, I, for all my sinews, am an attested
weakling. The craft of other men I do not fear, for I have encountered