'How you can consent to be tied down here, is the wonder to me!' said he. 'When we travelled through the year, just visited England and were off again, we were driving on our own road. Vienna in April and May--what do you say? You like the reviews there, and the dances, concerts, Zigeuner bands, military Bohemian bands. Or Egypt to-morrow, if you like--though you can't be permitted to swim in the Nile, as you wanted. Come, Xarifa, speak it. I go to exile without you. Say you come.' She smiled firmly. The name of her honeymoon days was not a cajolery to her. His name had been that of the Christian Romancero Knight Durandarte, and she gave it to him, to be on the proper level with him, while she still declined. 'Well, but just a month in Paris! There's nothing doing here. And we both like the French theatre.' 'London will soon be filling.' 'Well, but--' He stopped; for the filling of London did really concern her, in the game of Pull she was covertly playing with him. 'You seem to have caught the fever of this London; . . . no bands . . . no reviews . . . Low comedy acting.' He muttered his objections to London. 'The society of people speaking one's own tongue, add that,' she ventured to say. 'You know you are ten times more Spanish than English. Moorish, if you like.' 'The slave of the gallant Christian Knight, converted, baptized, and blissful. Oh, I know. But now we are settled in England, I have a wish to study English society.' 'Disappointing, I assure you;--dinners heavy, dancing boorish, intrigue a blind-man's-buff. We've been over it all before !' 'We have.' 'Admired, I dare say. You won't be understood.' 'I like my countrymen.' 'The women have good looks--of the ungarnished kind. The men are louts.' 'They are brave.' 'You're to see their fencing. You'll own a little goes a long way.' 'I think it will amuse me.' 'So I thought when I gave the nod to Isabella your friend.' 'You like her?' 'You, too.' 'One fancies she would make an encouraging second in a duel.' 'I will remember . . . when I call you out.' 'Oh, my dear lord, you have dozens to choose from leave me my one if we are to enter the lists.' 'We are, it seems; unless you consent to take the run to Paris. You are to say Tom or Rowsley.' 'The former, I can never feel at home in saying; Rowsley is Lady Charlotte's name for you.' The name of Lady Charlotte was an invitation to the conflict between them. He passed it, and said 'Durandarte runs a mile on the mouth, and the Coriolanus of their newspapers helps a stage-player to make lantern jaws. Neither of them comes well from the lips of my girl. After seven years she should have hit on a nickname, of none of the Christian suit. I am not "at home" either with "my lord." However, you send me off to Paris alone; and you'll be alone and dull here in this London. Incomprehensible to me why!' 'We are both wondering?' said Aminta.