“Yes, I believe men are infirm in moral purposes, as compared to women.  It is only in the brutalities of life that men are decisive.”

“Do you mean that women approach the trials of life less thinkingly and act less rationally than men?”

“Yes and no.  The daring too much is always before a man; the daring too little is, I think, the only trouble a woman has.”

“Oh, that is a large question, involving too much mental strain in a garden of roses, where the senses sleep and one is content with mere breath and the faintest motion.”

“There are enough roses; now we will go for the wild smilax and honeysuckle; perhaps the cool air of the pools will restore your mental activities.”

They left the dismembered roses scattered in fragrant heaps on the shaded path and walked slowly toward the dense hedge.

“What a perfect fortress this green wall makes of the gardens!” Olympia said, glancing around the great square, where the solid green wall could be seen running up much higher than their heads.

“Yes, as I said the other day, it would take hard work for an invading force to get at the house unless traitors within gave up the gates.  This one,” he added, unlocking a massive oak door, crossed with thick planks and studded with iron bolts, “alone admits from the creek and swamp.  It is locked all the time; no one has the key except the gardener, who delivers it to mamma every night.”

“A feudal demesne; it takes one back to the so-called days of chivalry.”

“Why do you say ‘so-called’?  To me they are the delight of the past—­when men went to battle for the smile of the women they loved, when knights rode the world over in search of adventure, and my lady, in her donjon, listened with pleasure to the lover’s roundelay.  Ah, it was a perfect life, an enchanting time.  We are living in a coarse, brutal age; chivalry was the creed of civilization, the knights the priesthood of the higher life.”

“There’s the Southerner through and through in that sentimentality.  To me chivalry means all that is narrow, cruel, and rapacious in man.  The philandering knights were sensual boobies, the simpering dames soulless wantons.  Life meant simply the rule of the strong, the slaughter of the weak.  Servitude was its law and robbery its methods.  Have you ever traveled in out-of-the-way places in Germany, Austria, or Italy?”

“No, I’ve never been abroad.”

“You would know better what I mean if you had seen the monstrous relics of the age you admire.  The few ruled the many; the knights were simply a brotherhood of blood and rapine; men were slaves, women were worse.  The bravest were as unlettered as your body-servant, the most beautiful dames as termagant as Penelope the cook.  At the table men and women ate from a common dish, without forks or spoons.  Men guzzled gallons of unfermented wine.  A bath was unknown.  Cleanliness was as unpracticed as Islamism in New York.  Ugh! anything but chivalry for me.”