"I went on to remind her," he continued, "of the campaign we had planned for ourselves--my great social amelioration programme--and showed her how she was breaking faith not only with me, but with the country, the race. Useless. She merely repeated her original phrase like a parrot. I left her and appealed to Mr. Freeland, but he said he should not interfere. Nancy was old enough to know. Don't worry her now, he said: give her another week's holiday. I saw Mrs. Freeland, who is, of course, as you must have noticed, desperately out of date; and she, too, declined to fight for me. She was very sorry, she said, and hoped that Nancy knew her own mind; but how much better to discover a mistake early rather than late! You know how people always say this, and when it is a mistake I agree with them; but this is not a mistake, but the simulacrum of a mistake. How can Nancy know her own mind when she has not got one? She is a dear, sweet girl, and I was devoted to her--am devoted to her--but she has no mind. It was I who was to give her that." What was I to say to him? Was I to say--what was of course evident to anyone but himself--that she had found some simple fellow on her own level whom she liked better? Was I to say, "You silly young ass, you deserve to lose her for not taking her as she was and loving that, instead of playing the dictator and unsexing her? For the best thing in the world is a pretty, affectionate girl true to her nature, and the silliest thing is a pretty, affectionate girl pretending to be something she is not." Either of these speeches I might have made, but instead I sympathized with him and advised him to wait a little longer before confessing complete failure. "No," he said; "her attitude was final. I don't feel as if I could reopen the matter. All those laughing sisters, too." (I liked to hear that human note.) "No, I shall go abroad for a while and then gather up the fragments and begin again. But of course I shan't marry now. That's the end of women for me." And with these words, which the ironical gods must be so tired of hearing, he strode away. It was, I must admit, a little to my relief. It is difficult to take these perplexities of other persons seriously. One somehow has the feeling that one's own wedding should be the last.