influence.

"Hardly," answered Unorna, with a bitter laugh.

"If I were the happy man you would not need that means of bringing me to
your feet. It is a pity that you do not want me. We should make a very
happy couple. But there is much against me. I am an old man, Unorna. My
figure was never of divine proportions, and as for my face, Nature made
it against her will. I know all that--and yet, I was young once, and
eloquent. I could make love then--I believe that I could still if it
would amuse you."

"Try it," said Unorna, who, like most people, could not long be angry
with the gnome-like little sage.

CHAPTER VI

"I could make love--yes, and since you tell me to try, I will."

He came and stood before her, straightening his diminutive figure in a
comical fashion as though he were imitating a soldier on parade.

"In the first place," he said, "in order to appreciate my skill, you
should realise the immense disadvantages under which I labour. I am a
dwarf, my dear Unorna. In the presence of that kingly wreck of a Homeric
man"--he pointed to the sleeper beside them--"I am a Thersites, if not
a pigmy. To have much chance of success I should ask you to close your
eyes, and to imagine that my stature matches my voice. That gift at
least, I flatter myself, would have been appreciated on the plains of
Troy. But in other respects I resemble neither the long-haired Greeks
nor the trousered Trojans. I am old and hideous, and in outward
appearance I am as like Socrates as in inward disposition I am totally
different from him. Admit, since I admit it, that I am the ugliest and
smallest man of your acquaintance."

"It is not to be denied," said Unorna with a smile.

"The admission will make the performance so much the more interesting.
And now, as the conjurer says when he begins, observe that there is no
deception. That is the figure of speech called lying, because there is
to be nothing but deception from beginning to end. Did you ever consider
the nature of a lie, Unorna? It is a very interesting subject."

"I thought you were going to make love to me."

"True; how easily one forgets those little things! And yet no woman ever
forgave a man who forgot to make love when she expected him to do so.
For a woman, who is a woman, never forgets to be exigent. And now there
is no reprieve, for I have committed myself, am sentenced, and
condemned to be made ridiculous in your eyes. Can there be anything more
contemptible,