"Oh, no, Colonel," I said, struggling with a laugh; "I couldn't allow that. It gives me great pleasure to advise you, only it's a very delicate matter, you know--and--really" (I was casting about wildly for an inspiration) "wouldn't it be better to go on to the city, as you intended, and ask the lady to go with you and exercise her own taste in selecting a ring?"
My companion took a step backward, folded his arms, and looked at me admiringly.
"Well, if it don't beat all how a woman walks through a millstone! Now that's what I call neat. Why, God bless you, madam, I've been boring at that thing for a week steady, night and day, by--myself, and making no headway. It makes me think of my mother. 'Robert,' she used to say (and she had a very small, trembly voice),--'Robert, a woman's little finger weighs more than a man's whole carcass;' and she was right. I'll be--destroyed if she wasn't right!"
Esculapius laughed rather unnecessarily when I repeated this conversation to him.
"I am willing to allow that it's funny," I said; "but after all there is a rude pathos in the man, an untutored chivalry. Nearly every man loves and reverences a woman; but this man loves and reverences women. It is old-fashioned, I know, but it has a breezy sweetness of its own, like the lavender and rosemary of our grandmothers; don't you think so?"
There was no reply. I imagine that Esculapius is sensible at times of his want of ideality, and feels a delicacy in conversing with me. So I went on musingly:--
"With such natures love is an instinct; and it is to instinct, after all, that we must look for everything that is fresh and poetic in humanity. We have all made this sacrifice to culture,--a sacrifice of force to expression. Isn't it so, my love?"
"I like to picture to myself the affection of which such a man is capable, for no doubt he loves this girl of whom he speaks; not, of course, as you--as you _ought_ to love me, but with a rude, wild sincerity, a sort of rugged grandeur. Imagine him betrayed by her. A man of the world might grow white about the lips and sick at heart, but he would find relief in cynicism and bitter words. This man would _act_,--some wild, strange act of vengeance. The cultured nature is a honeycomb: his is a solid mass; and masses give us our most picturesque effects. Don't you think so, my dear?"