“Do you know why I have just told you these lies?” She appealed to the prince, of a sudden, with the most childlike candour, and with the laugh still trembling on her lips. “Because when one tells a lie, if one insists on something unusual and eccentric⁠—something too ‘out of the way’ for anything, you know⁠—the more impossible the thing is, the more plausible does the lie sound. I’ve noticed this. But I managed it badly; I didn’t know how to work it.” She suddenly frowned again at this point as though at some sudden unpleasant recollection.

“If”⁠—she began, looking seriously and even sadly at him⁠—“if when I read you all that about the ‘poor knight,’ I wished to⁠—to praise you for one thing⁠—I also wished to show you that I knew all⁠—and did not approve of your conduct.”

“You are very unfair to me, and to that unfortunate woman of whom you spoke just now in such dreadful terms, Aglaya.”