“Monsieur is too self-sacrificing,” she said.  “Had I first bought the book, I should have kept it—­being a woman.  Reverse the case as you will, and show me any just reason why you should not do the same—­being a man?”

“Nay, the merest by-law of courtesy...”  I began, hesitatingly.

“Do not think me ungracious, Monsieur,” she interrupted, “if I hold that these so-called laws of courtesy are in truth but concessions, for the most part, from the strength of your sex to the weakness of ours.”

“Eh bien, Mademoiselle—­what then?”

“Then, Monsieur, may there not be some women—–­myself, for instance—­who do not care to be treated like children?”

“Pardon, Mademoiselle, but are you stating the case quite fairly?  Is it not rather that we desire not to efface the last lingering tradition of the age of chivalry—­not to reduce to prose the last faint echoes of that poetry which tempered the sword of the Crusader and inspired the song of the Trouvere?”

“Were it not better that the new age created a new code and a new poetry?” said Mademoiselle Dufresnoy.

“Perhaps; but I confess I love old forms and usages, and cling to creeds outworn.  Above all, to that creed which in the age of powder and compliment, no less than in the age of chivalry, enjoined absolute devotion and courtesy towards women.”

“Against mere courtesy reasonably exercised and in due season, I have nothing to say,” replied Mademoiselle Dufresnoy; “but the half-barbarous homage of the Middle Ages is as little to my taste as the scarcely less barbarous refinement of the Addison and Georgian periods.  Both are alike unsound, because both have a basis of insincerity.  Just as there is a mock refinement more vulgar than simple vulgarity, so are there courtesies which humiliate and compliments that offend.”

“Mademoiselle is pleased to talk in paradoxes,” said I.

Mademoiselle unlocked her door, and turning towards me with the same half-mocking smile and the same air of raillery, said:—­

“Monsieur, it is written in your English histories that when John le Bon was taken captive after the battle of Cressy, the Black Prince rode bareheaded before him through the streets of London, and served him at table as the humblest of his attendants.  But for all that, was John any the less a prisoner, or the Black Prince any the less a conqueror?”

“You mean, perhaps, that you reject all courtesy based on mere ceremonial.  Let me then put the case of this Froissart more plainly—­as I would have done from the first, had I dared to speak the simple truth.”

“And that is...?”

“That it will give me more pleasure to resign the book to you, Mademoiselle, than to possess it myself.”

Mademoiselle Dufresnoy colors up, looks both haughty and amused, and ends by laughing.

“In truth, Monsieur,” she says merrily, “if your politeness threatened at first to be too universal, it ends by becoming unnecessarily particular.”