"Why, 'tis night of summer, lady, a night soft and languorous and fragrant of sleeping flowers. But how of grim winter, how of rain and wind and lashing tempest--how think you?"
"Hark, how still is the night, Joconde, and yet full of soft stir, a sighing amid the leaves! 'Tis like the trees whispering one another. O, 'tis sweet night!"
"Soon to pass away, alas!" he sighed, whereupon she, stirring upon her ferny couch, sighed also; thereafter fell they silent awhile hearkening to the leafy stirrings all about them in the dark, and the slumberous murmur of the stream that, ever and anon, brake into faint gurglings like a voice that laughed, soft but roguish.
HE: Being lost with a Fool thou'rt desolate, sad and woeful.
SHE: Am I, Joconde? And how dost know all this?
SHE: Then are thy thoughts folly indeed. If thou must sigh, sigh for thyself.
HE: Why so I do, lady, and therewith grieve for myself and thyself, myself being Fool and thyself a dame of high degree, thus, betwixt whiles, I do fear thee also.
SHE: Thou fear! Thou fear me forsooth! And wherefore fear a helpless maid?
HE: There is the reason--she is helpless!
SHE: Ah, there doth Fool speak like chivalrous knight.
HE: Or very fool--a fool that fain would win fair Dian from high heaven. Alas, poor Fool, that, being fool, must needs look and sigh and sigh and look and leave her to the winning of some young Endymion!
SHE (_dreamily_): Endymion was but lowly shepherd, yet was he loved!
HE: Endymion was fair youth comely of feature, lady. Now had he worn ass's ears 'bove visage scarred--how then? On Ida's mount he had been sighing forlorn and lonely yet, methinks. For maids' hearts are ever governed by their eyes--
SHE: Art so wise in maids' hearts, Joconde?
HE: Wise am I in this: No man may ever know the heart of a woman--and woman herself but seldom.
Now here was silence again wherein Yolande, smiling, viewed him a dim shape in the gloom, and he leaned back to watch a star that twinkled through the leafy canopy above.
SHE: Thou art Duke Jocelyn's Fool at court?
HE: I am Duke Jocelyn's fool here and there and everywhere, lady.
SHE: Yet have I heard Duke Jocelyn was a mighty man-at-arms and, though youthful, sober-minded, full of cares of state and kept no Fool at court.