"
She put out a hand. "Sir, that way you need not take--if you will be
patient and hear me!"
"Lady," said I, "you may hastily despise me; but I am neither going
to take that way, nor to be patient, nor to hear you. But I am, as
you invited me, going to be very frank and confess to you, risking
your contempt, that I am extremely thankful the Genoese did not shoot
me, a while ago. Indeed, I do not remember in all my life to have
felt so glad, as I feel just now, to be alive. Give me your gun, if
you please."
"I do not understand."
"No, you do not understand. . . . Your gun, please . . . nay, you can
lay it on the turf between us. The phial, too, that you offered your
brother. . . . Thank you. And now, my wife, let us talk of your
country and mine; two islands which appear to differ more than I had
guessed. In Corsica it would seem that, let a vile thing be spoken
against a woman, it suffices. Belief in it does not count: it
suffices that a shadow has touched her, and rather than share that
shadow, men will kill themselves--so tender a plant is their honour.
Now, in England, O Princess, men are perhaps even more irrational.
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