"Nobody is more willing to concede that these are handsome fancies, Mother Sereda. But they make my head ache. Moreover, two people are needed to play chess, and your hypothesis does not provide anybody with an antagonist. Lastly, and above all, how do I know there is a word of truth in your high-sounding fancies?" "How can any of us know anything? And what is Jurgen, that his knowing or his not knowing should matter to anybody?" Jurgen slapped his hands together. "Hah, Mother Sereda!" says he, "but now I have you. It is that, precisely that damnable question, which your shadow has been whispering to me from the beginning of our companionship. And I am through with you. I will have no more of your gifts, which are purchased at the cost of hearing that whisper. I am resolved henceforward to be as other persons, and to believe implicitly in my own importance." "But have you any reason to blame me? I restored to you your youth. And when, just at the passing of that replevined Wednesday which I loaned, you rebuked the Countess Dorothy very edifyingly, I was pleased to find a man so chaste: and therefore I continued my grant of youth--" "Ah, yes!" said Jurgen: "then that was the way of it! You were pleased, just in the nick of time, by my virtuous rebuke of the woman who tempted me. Yes, to be sure. Well, well! come now, you know, that is very gratifying." "None the less your chastity, however unusual, has proved a barren virtue. For what have you made of a year of youth? Why, each thing that every man of forty-odd by ordinary regrets having done, you have done again, only more swiftly, compressing the follies of a quarter of a century into the space of one year. You have sought bodily pleasures. You have made jests. You have asked many idle questions. And you have doubted all things, including Jurgen. In the face of your memories, in the face of what you probably considered cordial repentance, you have made of your second youth just nothing. Each thing that every man of forty-odd regrets having done, you have done again." "Yes: it is undeniable that I re-married," said Jurgen. "Indeed, now I think of it, there was Anaïtis and Chloris and Florimel, so that I have married thrice in one year. But I am largely the victim of heredity, you must remember, since it was without consulting me that Smoit of Glathion perpetuated his characteristics." "Your marriages I do not criticize, for each was in accordance with the custom of the country: the law is always respectable; and matrimony is an honorable estate, and has a steadying influence, in all climes. It is true my shadow reports several other affairs--" "Oh, godmother, and what is this you are telling me!"