or drawing
men out."

And Arabella replied: "Certainly, dear, you have; and I think I have
some too."

The gentle altercation lasted half-an-hour, but they got no farther than
this. Mr. Pericles was either hopeless of protecting himself from
such shrewd assailants, or indifferent to their attacks, for all his
defensive measures were against the cold. He was muffled in a superbly
mounted bearskin, which came up so closely about his ears that Arabella
had to repeat to him all her questions, and as it were force a way
for her voice through the hide. This was provoking, since it not only
stemmed the natural flow of conversation, but prevented her imagination
from decorating the reminiscence of it subsequently (which was her
profound secret pleasure), besides letting in the outer world upon her.
Take it as an axiom, when you utter a sentimentalism, that more than one
pair of ears makes a cynical critic. A sentimentalism requires secresy.
I can enjoy it, and shall treat it respectfully if you will confide it
to me alone; but I and my friends must laugh at it outright.

"Does there not seem a soul in the moonlight?" for instance. Arabella,
after a rapturous glance at the rosy orb, put it to Mr. Pericles, in
subdued impressive tones. She had to repeat her phrase; Mr. Pericles
then echoing, with provoking monotony of tone, "Sol?"--whereupon "Soul!"
was reiterated, somewhat sharply: and Mr. Pericles, peering over the
collar of the bear, with half an eye, continued the sentence, in the
manner of one sent thereby farther from its meaning: "Ze moonlight?"
Despairing and exasperated, Arabella commenced afresh: "I said,
there seems a soul in it"; and Mr. Pericles assented bluntly: "In ze
light!"--which sounded so little satisfactory that Arabella explained,
"I mean the aspect;" and having said three times distinctly what she
meant, in answer to a terrific glare from the unsubmerged whites of the
eyes of Mr. Pericles, this was his comment, almost roared forth:

"Sol! you say so-whole--in ze moonlight--Luna? Hein? Ze aspect is of
Sol!--Yez."

And Mr. Pericles sank into his bear again, while Wilfrid Pole, who was
swinging his long cavalry legs to rearward, shouted; and Mr. Sumner,
a rising young barrister, walking beside Cornelia, smiled a smile of
extreme rigidity. Arabella was punished for claiming rights of birth.
She heard the murmuring course of the dialogue between Cornelia and Mr.
Sumner, sufficiently clear to tell her it wa