“Just as I would have done so, I was caught up in a little swirl of hatred which carried me away from your side. It didn't last the moment, but by the time it was gone the chance had taken flight. There is one thing I should tell you, however; at such a time you must not palter with a woman.” Peg's tones were uplifted to the pitch severe. “Do you know what you should have done that day? You should have seized me by the shoulder as you did that spy who dogged us; you should have stopped me flush and full. Without excuse or explanation or pretense of remorse for what had been, you should have made me take your arm. You might have found, had you so willed it, that for all my high head I would follow you like a dog.” “Take you by the shoulder!” cried I, somewhat aroused to a spirit of terror. “And that would have been polite, indeed, and the act of a true gentleman! I can see myself seizing you by the shoulder!” “For all that,” contended Peg, with much candor, “that is what you should have done. Remember: in treating with a woman, while one _should_ be a gentleman--your word--one _must_ be a man. There is this, too, about a woman with the man she would love. She likes warfare but she does not want to win; victory would only embarass your woman. Her instinct is rather for protection than to protect, and to find him on whom she leans weaker than herself might alarm her love into flight. And as for that politeness you tell of, it is an artifice, like a dress or a house, and good only within a limit. There be occasions when politeness to a man is a fair thing thrown away; also, there be occasions when politeness to a woman is nothing better than a waste of justice. Watch-dog, you should have pocketed the 'gentleman' for use on a languid day; you should have been all 'man.' You should have seized me by the shoulder; you should have made me go or stay, or talk or stand mute, as you willed. It was for that”--and Peg gave me this gravely, like some confidant Pythoness sure of her Apollo-inspired word--“it was for that, watch-dog, you were made the stronger of us two.” Now here was a pretty word of caution! It was as the General once said: one had only to listen, and lo! one would hear ever the savage stirring about in Peg. “There is one thing whereof I was cheated,” said I, after a brief silence, and seeking to give our talk a slighter, if not a direction of more reason. “You were to give me lessons in yourself. I looked forward to no little improvement from such good teaching, and when I was made to go missing it I could feel a plain loss to myself.” “And perhaps now,” observed Peg, with her half-merry glance, “I was giving you a lesson in Peg for every moment of that frowning time.” Then, as if in reply to my look of bewilderment: “No, watch-dog I went too fast in those threats to expound myself. You are in no sort prepared for so tremendous a course of study.” “Wherein do I lack now?”