“To no extent,” I declared hastily (for although I had indeed been listening at the door, it appeared, after the weight which she set upon the incident, more honourable that I should deny it in order to conciliate her mind). “It so chanced that for the moment this person had forgotten whether the handle he was grasping was of the push-out or turn-in variety, and in the involvement a few words of no particular or enduring significance settled lightly upon his perception. “In that case,” she replied in high-souled liberality, while her eyes scintillated towards me with a really all-overpowering radiance, “I will forgive you.” “We have an old but very appropriate saying, ‘To every man the voice of one maiden carries further than the rolling of thunder,’” I remarked in a significantly restrained tone; for, although conscious that the circumstance was becoming more menace-laden than I had any previous intention, I found myself to be incapable of extrication. “Florence--” “Oh,” she exclaimed quickly, raising her polished hand with an undeniable gesture of reproof, “you must not call me by my christian name, Mr. Ho.” “Yet,” replied this person, with a confessedly stubborn inelegance, “you call me by the name of Ho.” Her eyes became ox-like in an utter absence of almond outline. “Yes,” she said gazing, “but that--that is not your christian name, is it?” “In a position of speaking--this one being as a matter of fact a discreditable follower of the sublime Confucius--it may be so regarded,” I answered, “inasmuch as it is the milk-name of childhood.” “But you always put it last,” she urged. “Assuredly,” I replied. “Being irrevocably born with the family name of Kong, it is thought more reasonable that that should stand first. After that, others are attached as the various contingencies demand it, as Ho upon participating in the month-age feast, the book-name of Tsin at a later period, Paik upon taking a degree, and so forth.” “I am very sorry, Mr. Kong,” said the maiden, adding, with what at the time certainly struck this person as shallow-witted prejudice. “Of course it is really quite your own fault for being so tospy-turvily arranged in every way. But, to return to the subject, why should not one speak of one’s heart?” “Because,” replied this person, colouring deeply, and scarcely able to control his unbearable offence that so irreproachably-moulded a creature should openly refer to the detail, “because it is a gross and unrefined particular, much more internal and much less pleasantly-outlined than those extremities whose spoken equivalent shall henceforth be an abandoned word from my lips.” “But, in any case, it is not the actual organ that one infers,” protested the maiden. “As the seat of the affections, passions, virtues, and will, it is the conventional emblem of every thought and emotion.”