If he hesitated a moment, it was to fill up the pause with
""Oh, what heart so wise.
Could, unbewildered, meet those matchless eyes?"
Did the fair dame wear flowers in her dark hair, he talked of
"Lillies, such as maidens wear,
In the deep midnight of their hair."
If she sang, he praised by whispering that her voice
"Bore his soul along
Over the silver waters of sweet song."
Dearly did he love a little religious controversy; for then the dispute could be wound up with
"Thou, for my sake, at Allah's shrine,
And I at any god's for thine."
This propensity had brought on him an absurd nickname. A young lady, whose designs on another he had thwarted for a whole evening by a course of ill-timed compliments—and the prosperity of a compliment, even more than of a jest,
"Must lie i' the ear of him who hears it,"
—called him Cupid Quotem; and the ridiculous is memory's most adhesive plaster.
