the rub." He folded his arms dramatically and nodded at the woman.
"There's the gall and bitterness, the worm in the fruit, the peculiar
irony--if you'll allow me to say so--of this distressing affair.
Listen, madam! If I wanted a rose of you, 'twas for your whole sex's
sake: your sex's, madam--every one of whom was, up to five or six
months ago, the object with me of something very nearly allied to
worship."

"Lord help the creature!" cried the woman. "What's he telling
about? And what have you to do with my sex, young man? which is what
the Lord made it."

"It is _not_, madam. Make no mistake about it: 'twere blasphemy to
think so. But speaking generally, what I--as a man--have to do with
your sex is to protect it."

"A nice sort of protector you'd make!" she retorted, planting her
knuckles on her hips and eyeing him contemptuously.

"I am a beginner, madam, and have much to learn. But you shall not
discourage me from protecting you, though you deny me the rose which
was to have been my emblem. Every woman is a rose, madam, as says
the poet Dunbar--

"'Sweet rose of vertew and of gentilness,
Richest in bonty and in bewty clear
And every vertew that is werrit dear,
Except only that ye are merciless--"

"You take me? 'Merciless,' madam?"