So Gerald said only: “You are young. At least, you are living in a young body. So do you beware! For, so long as you go about the Marches of Antan in any conveyance so perilous, the lying half-magic of the Two Truths will beset that young body, and the Princess will await you at every turn. She will encounter you under many names, for it is true that, just as you said very long ago, women do vary in their given names. She will encounter you in varying shapes. But in any case, she waits for every young romantic everywhere, as a rather lovable and as an interestingly formed and colored impediment.... I think it, therefore, highly improbable that you will complete the journey to Antan. I, in any case, am middle-aged. And I cry, not discontentedly, my personal farewell to the half-magic of racing pulses and of distended nerves—” For an instant Gerald was silent. In his old eyes awoke that gleam which anybody familiar with Gerald would have recognized at once. “You see,” he continued, with large affability, “while you have been theorizing, my dear fellow,—oh, very charmingly, and with a thoroughness which does you credit, great credit,—well, my investigations meanwhile have taken a rather more practical turn. I am not, of course, at liberty to speak of my love-affairs out yonder, with any real explicitness. No, here, as always, _noblesse oblige_. Still, if you only knew! If you but knew half as much as I do about that droll escapade with the Lady Sigid of Audierne and her cousin the Abbess! about what happened to me in the harem of Caliph Mizraim! about Beatrice and Henriette and Madame Pamela and Vittoria and Elspeth! about the three girls at the tanner’s! or if you knew the truth as to what her Majesty and I were about that night we came so near being caught—!” “I see,” the boy said, rather wistfully. “You have been a devil of a fellow and a sad rip among the ladies.” “Oh, dear me, not at all!” said Gerald. And the old fellow now wore the expression which, sometimes, accompanies a blush. “It is merely that I have talked a bit too freely. It is only that this rash tongue of mine was running away with me. So I can but ask you to forget every word I have uttered. For exalted names ought, really, not to be repeated thus lightly. I shall therefore say nothing whatever about the eight other queens with whom my name has been coupled,—with how good reason I, you understand, must be the last person in the world to admit,—nor about any of the empresses either. In fact, a great deal of the scandal about my intimacy with one of them was exaggerated. No: I most certainly must not voice any indiscretions about dear Caroline. So I merely point out—without mentioning any names whatever,—that my experience has been considerable: and I can assure you, my dear fellow, that in the end these half-magics produce, after all, no very prodigious miracles.” “But—” said the boy.