"I'm sharing the fate of the women of my time who challenged men to battle."
"To your vast surprise it was just like all battles," he answered, adopting her formal diction.
"Just like all battles." She thought this over. "You pick a set-up, or else win a Pyrrhic victory, or you're wrecked and ruined--you're a ghostly echo from a broken wall."
"You are neither wrecked nor ruined," he told her. "Are you quite sure you've been in a real battle?"
