t time her royal lover.

In her turn she dreams, she meditates, she argues. She is not yet, like
Troilus, love's prisoner; Chaucer does not proceed so fast. She keeps
her vision lucid; her imagination and her senses have not yet done their
work and reared before her that glittering phantom, ever present, which
conceals reality from lovers. She is still mistress of herself enough to
discern motives and objections; she discusses and reviews elevated
reasons, low reasons, and even some of those practical reasons which
will be instantly dismissed, but not without having produced their
effect. Let us not make an enemy of this king's son. Besides, can I
prevent his loving me? His love has nothing unflattering; is he not the
first knight of Troy after Hector? What is there astonishing in his
passion for me? If he loves me, shall I be the only one to be loved in
Troy? Scarcely, for

Men loven wommen al this toun aboute.
Be they the wers? Why, nay, withouten doute.

Am I not pretty? "I am oon of the fayrest" in all "the toun of Troye,"
though I should not like people to know that I know it:

Al wolde I that noon wiste of this thought.

After all I am free; "I am myn owene woman"; no husband to say to me
"chekmat!" And "_par dieux!_ I am nought religious!" I am not a nun.

But right as whan the sonne shyneth brighte
In March that chaungeth ofte tyme his face
And that a cloud is put with wind to flighte
Which over-sprat the sonne as for a space,
A cloudy thought gan thorugh hir soule pace,
That over-spradde hir brighte thoughtes alle.[514]

Now she unfolds contradictory arguments supported by considerations
equally decisive; she is suffering from that _diboulia_ (alternate will)
familiar to lovers who are not yet thoroughly in love. There are two
Cressidas in her; the dialogue begun with Pandarus is continued in her
heart; the scene of comedy is renewed there in a graver key.

Her decision is not taken; when will it be? At what precise moment does
love begin? One scarcely knows; when it has come one fixes the date in
the past by hypothesis. We say: it was that day, but when that day was
the present day, we said nothing, and knew nothing; a sort of "perhaps"
filled the soul, delightful, but still only a perhaps. Cressida is in
that obscure period, and the workings within her are shown by the
impression which the incidents of daily life produce upon her mind. It
seems to her that everyth