his crisis, he magnanimously proposed to the Fair
Enemy he forced her to be, and liked to picture her as being, a month in
Paris.

Aminta declined it for herself; after six or more years of travelling,
she wished to settle, and know her country, she said: a repetition
remark, wide of the point, and indicatory to the game of Pull she was
again playing beneath her smooth visage, unaware that she had the wariest
of partners at the game.

'But go you--do, I beg,' she entreated. 'It will give you new
impressions; and I cannot bear to tie you down here.'

'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 tho