"Our blacksmith," said Charmian, addressing the moon again, "has known many women--in books! His knowledge is, therefore, profound!" and she laughed.

"May I ask why you laugh at me?"

"Oh!" said she, "don't you know that women in books and women out of books are no more the same than day and night, or summer and winter?"

"And yet there are thousands of women who exist for us in books only, Laura, Beatrice, Trojan Helen, Aspasia, the glorious Phryne, and hosts of others," I demurred.

"Yes; but they exist for us only as their historians permit them, as their biographers saw, or imagined them. Would Petrarch ever have permitted Laura to do an ungracious act, or anything which, to his masculine understanding, seemed unfeminine; and would Dante have mentioned it had Beatrice been guilty of one? A man can no more understand a woman from the reading of books than he can learn Latin or Greek from staring at the sky."

"Of that," said I, shaking my head, "of that I am not so sure."

"Then--personally--you know very little concerning women?" she inquired.

"I have always been too busy," said I. Here Charmian turned to look at me again.

"Too busy?" she repeated, as though she had not heard aright; "too busy?"

"Much too busy!" Now, when I said this, she laughed, and then she frowned, and then she laughed again.

"You would much rather make a--horseshoe than talk with a woman, perhaps?"

"Yes, I think I would."

"Oh!" said Charmian, frowning again, but this time she did not look at me.

"You see," I explained, turning my empty pipe over and over, rather aimlessly, "when I make a horseshoe I take a piece of iron and, having heated it, I bend and shape it, and with every hammer-stroke I see it growing into what I would have it--I am sure of it, from start to finish; now, with a woman it is--different."

"You mean that you cannot bend, and shape her, like your horseshoe?" still without looking towards me.

"I mean that--that I fear I should never be quite sure of a --woman, as I am of my horseshoe."

"Why, you see," said Charmian, beginning to braid the tress of hair, "a woman cannot, at any time, be said to resemble a horseshoe--very much, can she?"

"Surely," said I, "surely you know what I mean--?"

"There are Laura and Beatrice and Helen and Aspasia and Phryne, and hosts of others," said Charmian, nodding to the moon again.

"Oh, yes--our blacksmith has read of so many women in books that he has no more idea of women out of books than I of Sanscrit."

And, in a little while, seeing I was silent, she condescended to glance towards me:

"Then I suppose, under the circumstances, you have never been--in love?"

"In love?" I repeated, and dropped my pipe.

"In love."

"The Lord forbid!"

"Why, pray?"

"Because Love is a disease--a madness, coming between a man and his life's work. Love!" said I, "it is a calamity!"

"Never having been in love himself, our blacksmith, very naturally, knows all about it!" said Charmian to the moon.

"I speak only of such things as I have read--" I began.

"More books!" she sighed.

"--words of men, much wiser than I--poets and philosophers, written--"

"When they were old and gray-headed," Charmian broke in; "when they were quite incapable of judging the matter--though many a grave philosopher loved; now didn't he?"

"To be sure," said I, rather hipped, "Dionysius Lambienus, I think, says somewhere that a woman with a big mouth is infinitely sweeter in the kissing--and--"

"Do you suppose he read that in a book?" she inquired, glancing at me sideways.

"Why, as to that," I answered, "a philosopher may love, but not for the mere sake of loving."

"For whose sake then, I wonder?"

"A man who esteems trifles for their own sake is a trifler, but one who values them, rather, for the deductions that may be drawn from them--he is a philosopher."

Charmian rose, and stood looking down at me very strangely.

"So!" said she, throwing back her head, "so, throned in lofty might, superior Mr. Smith thinks Love a trifle, does he?"

"My name is Vibart, as I think you know," said I, stung by her look or her tone, or both.

"Yes," she answered, seeming to look down at me from an immeasurable attitude, "but I prefer to know him, just now, as Superior Mr. Smith."

"As you will," said I, and rose also; but, even then, though she had to look up to me, I had the same inward conviction that her eyes were regarding me from a great height; wherefore I, attempted--quite unsuccessfully to light my pipe.

And after I had struck flint and steel vainly, perhaps a dozen times, Charmian took the box from me, and, igniting the tinder, held it for me while I lighted my tobacco.

"Thank you!" said I, as she returned the box, and then I saw that she was smiling. "Talking of Charmian Brown--" I began.

"But we are not."

"Then suppose you begin?"

"Do you really wish to hear about that--humble person?"

"Very much!"

"Then you must know, in the first place, that she is old, sir, dreadfully old!"

"But," said I, "she really cannot be more than twenty-three--or four at the most."

"She is just twenty-one!" returned Charmian, rather hastily, I thought.