"Assuredly there were never any other persons so mad as we. For I must do the wooing, as though you were
the maid, and all the while you rebuff me and suffer so that I fear to look on you. Men say you are no better
than a highwayman; you confess yourself to be a thief: and I believe none of your accusers. Perion de la
Forêt," said Melicent, and ballad−makers have never shaped a phrase wherewith to tell you of her voice, "I
know that you have dabbled in dishonour no more often than an archangel has pilfered drying linen from a
hedgerow. I do not guess, for my hour is upon me, and inevitably I know! and there is nothing dares to come
between us now."
"Nay,ho, and even were matters as you suppose them, without any warrant,there is at least one silly
stumbling knave that dares as much. Saith he: 'What is the most precious thing in the world?Why,
assuredly, Dame Melicent's welfare. Let me get the keeping of it, then. For I have been entrusted with a host
of common priceless thingswith youth and vigour and honour, with a clean conscience and a child's faith,
and so onand no person alive has squandered them more gallantly. So heartward ho! and trust me now, my
timorous yoke−fellow, to win and squander also the chiefest jewel of the world.' Eh, thus he chuckles and
nudges me, with wicked whisperings. Indeed, madame, this rascal that shares equally in my least faculty is a
most pitiful, ignoble rogue! and he has aforetime eked out our common livelihood by such practices as your
unsullied imagination could scarcely depicture. Until I knew you I had endured him. But you have made of
him a horror. A horror, a horror! a thing too pitiful for hell!"
Perion turned away from her, groaning. He flung himself into a chair. He screened his eyes as if before some
physical abomination.
The girl kneeled close to him, touching him.
"My dear, my dear! then slay for me this other Perion of the Forest."
And Perion laughed, not very mirthfully.
"It is the common usage of women to ask of men this little labour, which is a harder task than ever Hercules,
that mighty−muscled king of heathenry, achieved. Nay, I, for all my sinews, am an attested weakling. The
craft of other men I do not fear, for I have encountered no formidable enemy save myself; but that same
midnight stabber unhorsed me long ago. I had wallowed in the mire contentedly enough until you came. . . .
Ah, child, child! why needed you to trouble me! for to−night I want to be clean as you are clean, and that I
may not ever be. I am garrisoned with devils, I am the battered plaything of every vice, and I lack the
strength, and it may be, even the will, to leave my mire. Always I have betrayed the stewardship of man and
god alike that my body might escape a momentary discomfort! And loving you as I do, I cannot swear that in
the outcome I would not betray you too, to this same end! I cannot swear Oh, now let Satan laugh, yet not
unpitifully, since he and I, alone, know all the reasons why I may not swear! Hah, Madame Melicent!" cried
Perion, in his great agony, "you offer me that gift an emperor might not accept save in awed gratitude; and I
refuse it." Gently he raised her to her feet. "And now, in God's name, go, madame, and leave the prodigal
among his husks."
"You are a very brave and foolish gentleman," she said, "who chooses to face his own achievements without
any paltering. To every man, I think, that must be bitter work; to the woman who loves him it is impossible."
Perion could not see her face, because he lay prone at the feet of Melicent, sobbing, but without any tears,
and tasting very deeply of such grief and vain regret as, he had thought, they know in hell alone; and even
after she had gone, in silence, he lay in this same posture for an exceedingly long while.
And after he knew not how long a while, Perion propped his chin between his hands and, still sprawling upon
the rushes, stared hard into the little, crackling fire. He was thinking of a Perion de la Forêt that once had
Domnei: A Comedy of Woman−Worship
3. How Melicent Wooed 7