When people first discover beauty, they tend to linger. Even if they don’t at first recognize it for what it is.

A wager?" I repeated.
"Yes," he said, and gave me a slow smile, bright with challenge. ...
"Stake?" I asked cautiously. He was still smiling, an odd sort of smile, hard to define.
"A kiss." My first reaction was outrage, but then I remembered that I was on my way to Court, and that had to be the kind of thing they did at Court. And if I win I don't have to collect. I hesitated only a moment longer, lured by the thought of open sky, and speed, and winning.
"Done," I said.

Finally someone takes me seriously enough to ask for my word of honor, and it’s a villain.

When in doubt, be ridiculous.

Why is it the songs all end with the good people winning, but in life they don't?"
They don't make songs when the good lose," I muttered. "They make war chants against the bad. So there won't be any songs for us.

In the world of fancy even the most base man's actions sometimes take on the forms of beauty. Dim pathways do sometimes open before the eyes of the man who has not killed the possibilities of beauty in himself by being too sure.