Gogyrvan grinned. "Obviously, I advise you to give thanks you were born a man, because that sturdier sex has so much less need to bother over breakage." "What sort of breakage, sir?" says Jurgen. Gogyrvan told him. Duke Jurgen for the second time looked properly horrified. "Your aphorisms, King, are abominable, and of a sort unlikely to quiet my misery. However, we were speaking of your daughter, and it is she who must be considered rather than I." "Now I perceive that you take my meaning perfectly. Yes, in all matters which concern my daughter I would have you lie like a gentleman." "Well, I am afraid, sir," said Jurgen, after a pause, "that you are a person of somewhat degraded ideals." "Ah, but you are young. Youth can afford ideals, being vigorous enough to stand the hard knocks they earn their possessor. But I am an old fellow cursed with a tender heart and tolerably keen eyes. That combination, Messire de Logreus, is one which very often forces me to jeer out of season, simply because I know myself to be upon the verge of far more untimely tears." Thus Gogyrvan replied. He was silent for a while, and he contemplated the fire. Then he waved a shriveled hand toward the window, and Gogyrvan began to speak, meditatively: "Messire de Logreus, it is night in my city of Cameliard. And somewhere one of those roofs harbors a girl whom we will call Lynette. She has a lover--we will say he is called Sagramor. The names do not matter. Tonight, as I speak with you, Lynette lies motionless in the carved wide bed that formerly was her mother's. She is thinking of Sagramor. The room is dark save where moonlight silvers the diamond-shaped panes of ancient windows. In every corner of the room mysterious quivering suggestions lurk." "Ah, sire," says Jurgen, "you also are a poet!" "Do not interrupt me, then! Lynette, I repeat, is thinking of Sagramor. Again they sit near the lake, under an apple-tree older than Rome. The knotted branches of the tree are upraised as in benediction: and petals--petals, fluttering, drifting, turning,--interminable white petals fall silently in the stillness. Neither speaks: for there is no need. Silently he brushes a petal from the blackness of her hair, and silently he kisses her. The lake is dusky and hard-seeming as jade. Two lonely stars hang low in the green sky. It is droll that the chest of a man is hairy, oh, very droll! And a bird is singing, a silvery needle of sound moves fitfully in the stillness. Surely high Heaven is thus quietly colored and thus strangely lovely. So at least thinks little Lynette, lying motionless like a little mouse, in the carved wide bed wherein Lynette was born." "A very moving touch, that," Jurgen interpolated.