“I did not hope to convey anything at all to you. And certainly not fame, for there is no such thing. I have seen pigeons sitting on the heads of statues of great men in London, and I have seen little critics sitting on their fame. This is a world of isolated people, and there can be no fame where there is no mutual understanding.” “You are oddly pessimistic, and you are also wilfully evading the point. When I saw you just now, I hoped that you had repented of your sin and needed my help.” “I have committed no sin that would appeal to you,” said the suffragette. “But that is, of course, beside the point. What you want is that I should repent of being myself, and become a sort of inferior female you.” “Indeed you have come to hasty and mistaken conclusions about my intentions,” said the priest, whose principal virtue was perseverance. “Regarding your political opinions, I have every sympathy with your cause, though none for your methods. There is something so very coarse about militancy.” “Have you ever tried denying a creature the food it needs? I think you would find that even a white mouse would be coarse if you starved it.” “You may be right. My sister is a member of the Church League for Women’s Suffrage. Perhaps you also belong to that sisterhood?” “No,” she answered. “I belong to the Shrieking Sisterhood.” “It seems useless for me to try and help you in this mood,” sighed the priest. “I can only pray that I may be shown the way to your heart....” “I have none,” she said. In a garden not five hundred miles away from the garden in which she sat was the Fact which she had Forgotten, set in a silver light among the silver trees. The gardener stood among the pale grape-fruit trees, with his head back in his usual conceited way, with his hands in his pockets and his feet in the wet grass. “This is nonsense,” he thought. “She is only half human.” “Love for a thing only half human is only half love.” “You can’t build a world out of words, as she tries to do.” “In a thing like love, there is fact and there is theory. Theory is only falsehood disguised as fact.” “She is not a bit pretty.” “I believe she would rather make an enemy than make a friend.” “Something has gone wrong with the woman of to-day. She has left the man behind, but she has not gone forward.” “What have I been about to allow such a woman to disturb me? I came to this island a king, and I have made myself a slave.” “It is youth that has burnt me. I am done with youth. It is fine to have reached age in theory, and yet in practice still to have one’s life ahead. My youth has been a fire in my path, and she has stamped it out.” The moon explored the spangled sky. The fireless interwove with the pale purring noises of the night. The mad still shadows of the palms blotted the grass. The gardener went into the verandah firmly posed as He Who has Passed through Fire, and has emerged, cured of the silly disease of youth, into a pale silver light.