Now I am wise, and I know!" She touched her forehead with her finger, just where the curls were softest and prettiest.
"Oh, you have learned to be thrice more beautiful than ever you were!" I said, impetuously.
"So I am often told," answered she, calmly.
"Who dared tell you ?" cried I, quick as fire, laying my hand on my sword.
"The false common flowers by the wayside tell me!" said Helene, pertly.
"Let them beware, or I will take their heads off for rank weeds!" I answered.
For at that time, in the Court of Plassenburg, we talked in figures and romance words.

We had indeed become so familiar with the mode that we could use no other, even in times of earnestness.

So that a man would go to be hanged or married with a quipsome conceit on his lips.
"I think, Sir Janus Double-tongue," she said, "that you would not be the worse of a little medicine of your own concocting." And with that she swept her skirts daintily about and tripped down in to the pleasaunce of flowers, to make which the Prince Karl had brought a skilled gardener all the way from France.
I prowled about the higher terrace, moodily watching the sky and thinking on the morrow's weather.

And by-and-by I saw one come forth from among the cropped Dutch hedges, and stride across to where Helene walked with something white in her hand.

I could see her again picking a flower to pieces, and methought I could hear the words.