In answer to these arguments of the Queen, a certain gentleman named Faramond doth make reply. Leaving married women aside altogether, as being so easy to get the better of without a man’s using any great reasoning to persuade them to it, he doth consider the case of maids and widows, maintaining the maid to be more steadfast in love than the widow. For the widow, who hath experienced in the past the secrets of passion, doth never love steadfastly, but always doubtfully and tentatively, quickly changing and desiring now one, now another gallant, never knowing to which she should give herself for her greater advantage and honour! Nay! sometimes so vacillating is she in her long deliberations she doth choose never an one at all, and her amorous passion can find no steadfast hold whatever. Quite opposite is the maid, he saith, and all such doubts and hesitations be foreign to her. Her one desire is to have a lover true, and after once choosing him well, to give all her soul to him and please him in all things, deeming it the best honour she can do him to be true and steadfast in her love. So being only too ardent for the things which have never yet been seen, heard or proven of her, she doth long far more than other women which have had experience of life, to see, hear and prove all such matters. Thus the keen desire she hath to see new things doth strongly dominate her heart; she doth make enquiries of them that know,—which doth increase her flame yet more. Accordingly she is very eager to be joined with him she hath made Lord of her affections, whereas this same ardour is not in the widow, seeing she hath passed that way already.