"My dear child, I've not spoilt your life for you at all. What I've done is to prevent somebody else spoiling it; or, at any rate, I've removed the risk of that happening." "There wasn't any risk of that happening. I know what he's like, and I know how he loves me. And I love him more than ever now. I always shall love him, whatever happens. You can't make me alter there." "You're talking very foolishly, B. You're eighteen years old, and you've fallen in love for the first time in life with a man who at the best wouldn't be a particularly suitable life companion for you. Whatever you may feel about it now, you're not going to spend the rest of your days in mourning for him. In six months' time you'll be wondering how you can have felt about him as you do now. I can assure you of that." She sat looking down upon her hands lying on her lap, with an expression that meant she was not going to answer a statement so absurd as that. Her look of obstinacy stiffened him still further against her, and he proceeded to develop his thesis, not realising that by so doing he was bound to produce just the opposite effect from what he wished. "Love of this sort is like an illness," he said. "You get over it in that form even if it leads to marriage. If it's the right sort of marriage the love turns into something else that lasts, and no doubt it's the right way to begin. If it doesn't lead to marriage, well, you simply get over it. It's time you began to try." Still no answer. If he _would_ talk in this way, so incredibly misunderstanding the most beautiful and wonderful thing in the world, it was her duty to listen to him as long as he went on. He didn't go on any more. He was irritated by her silence. "Oh, well," he said, rising from his chair, "there's no use in saying any more. If you're determined to be love-sick, you must be so, as long as you can keep it up. I should have thought, though, that you'd have had more pride than to show yourself pining for a man who, after all, has given you up. I've nothing more to say about it."