"There was a Yolande and a Guenevere"--the voice of Mother Sereda appeared to read from a memorandum,--"and a Sylvia, who was your own step-grandmother, and a Stella, who was a yogini, whatever that may be; and a Phyllis and a Dolores, who were the queens of Hell and Philistia severally. Moreover, you visited the Queen of Pseudopolis in circumstances which could not but have been unfavorably viewed by her husband. Oh, yes, you have committed follies with divers women." "Follies, it may be, but no crimes, not even a misdemeanor. Look you, Mother Sereda, does your shadow report in all this year one single instance of misconduct with a woman?" says Jurgen, sternly. "No, dearie, as I joyfully concede. The very worst reported is that matters were sometimes assuming a more or less suspicious turn when you happened to put out the light. And, of course, shadows cannot exist in absolute darkness." "See now," said Jurgen, "what a thing it is to be careful! Careful, I mean, in one's avoidance of even an appearance of evil. In what other young man of twenty-one may you look to find such continence? And yet you grumble!" "I do not complain because you have lived chastely. That pleases me, and is the single reason you have been spared this long." "Oh, godmother, and whatever are you telling me!" "Yes, dearie, had you once sinned with a woman in the youth I gave, you would have been punished instantly and very terribly. For I was always a great believer in chastity, and in the old days I used to insure the chastity of all my priests in the only way that is infallible." "In fact, I noticed something of the sort as you passed in Leukê." "And over and over again I have been angered by my shadow's reports, and was about to punish you, my poor dearie, when I would remember that you held fast to the rarest of all virtues in a man, and that my shadow reported no irregularities with women. And that would please me, I acknowledge: so I would let matters run on a while longer. But it is a shiftless business, dearie, for you are making nothing of the youth I restored to you. And had you a thousand lives the result would be the same." "Nevertheless, I am a monstrous clever fellow." Jurgen chuckled here. "You are, instead, a palterer; and your life, apart from that fine song you made about me, is sheer waste." "Ah, if you come to that, there was a brown man in the Druid forest, who showed me a very curious spectacle, last June. And I am not apt to lose the memory of what he showed me, whatever you may say, and whatever I may have said to him."