“It would be different with me,” quoth Ripton.

“How?” asked the hero.

“Because I’m worse than you,” was all the logical explanation Ripton was capable of.

“I do hope you will go home soon,” he added.

“Yes,” said Richard, “and I, so do I hope so.  But I’ve work to do now.  I dare not, I cannot, leave it.  Lucy would be the last to ask me;—­you saw her letter yesterday.  Now listen to me, Rip.  I want to make you be just to women.”

Then he read Ripton a lecture on erring women, speaking of them as if he had known them and studied them for years.  Clever, beautiful, but betrayed by love, it was the first duty of all true men to cherish and redeem them.  “We turn them into curses, Rip; these divine creatures.”  And the world suffered for it.  That—­that was the root of all the evil in the world!

“I don’t feel anger or horror at these poor women, Rip!  It’s strange.  I knew what they were when we came home in the boat.  But I do—­it tears my heart to see a young girl given over to an old man—­a man she doesn’t love.  That’s shame!—­Don’t speak of it.”

Forgetting to contest the premiss, that all betrayed women are betrayed by love, Ripton was quite silenced.  He, like most young men, had pondered somewhat on this matter, and was inclined to be sentimental when he was not hungry.  They walked in the moonlight by the railings of the park.  Richard harangued at leisure, while Ripton’s teeth chattered.  Chivalry might be dead, but still there was something to do, went the strain.  The lady of the day had not been thrown in the hero’s path without an object, he said; and he was sadly right there.  He did not express the thing clearly; nevertheless Ripton understood him to mean, he intended to rescue that lady from further transgressions, and show a certain scorn of the world.  That lady, and then other ladies unknown, were to be rescued.  Ripton was to help.  He and Ripton were to be the knights of this enterprise.  When appealed to, Ripton acquiesced, and shivered.  Not only were they to be knights, they would have to be Titans, for the powers of the world, the spurious ruling Social Gods, would have to be defied and overthrown.  And Titan number one flung up his handsome bold face as if to challenge base Jove on the spot; and Titan number two strained the upper button of his coat to meet across his pocket-handkerchief on his chest, and warmed his fingers under his coat-tails.  The moon had fallen from her high seat and was in the mists of the West, when he was allowed to seek his blankets, and the cold acting on his friend’s eloquence made Ripton’s flesh very contrite.  The poor fellow had thinner blood than the hero; but his heart was good.  By the time he had got a little warmth about him, his heart gratefully strove to encourage him in the conception of becoming a knight and a Titan; and so striving Ripton fell asleep and dreamed.

CHAPTER XXXVII