Thus to my infinite regret I discovered that--try as I would--I could not make myself like the same things and people and pleasures as Fay liked; and I recognised that this want of unanimity arose not from the difference in our ages, but from the difference in our characters. I have known parents and children--who, though separated by a generation, were similar in character--enjoy exactly the same things. And I do not think that the difference in years between my wife and myself affected this diversity of tastes, except in so far as my age prevented me from becoming one with her in mind, as I already was in heart. I could control my words and my actions, but I could not help my thoughts and my feelings: nobody can who is over forty, but I believe that to youth even this miracle is possible. The very diversities of character which make for love militate against friendship, and therefore the sooner they are done with the better, after courtship is over and marriage begins. But the tragedy of my life lay in the fact that I was too old to do away with them on my part, and I could not expect Fay to do for me what I was unable (however willing, and Heaven knows I was willing enough) to do for her. So although--or rather, because--I could not throw myself into her world, I would not ask her to throw herself into mine. Doubtless I was wrong in this--I evidently was, as subsequent events proved, and as Annabel did not hesitate to point out to me. But I did what seemed to me to be right at the time, as I always try to do; and the fact that what I think right at the time almost invariably turns out to be wrong afterwards seems to be rather more my misfortune than my fault: just part of that instinct of failure which has haunted me all my life. A strong man--as Annabel was never tired at pointing out to me afterwards--would have made his own world and his own interest so paramount and absorbing that his wife would have been compelled, willy-nilly, to make them hers; but I was not a strong man. Morever I fully recognised the truth that if you take anything from anybody, especially anybody young, you must supply something in its place: nature abhors a vacuum, and youth abhors it still more; therefore if I had succeeded in weaning Fay from her passion for acting and all the pleasure and excitement it involved, I should have been bound in honour to give her in its place other and equally absorbing interests, and these it was not in my power to supply. What pleasure could the calm country life of Restham--which so exactly suited Annabel and me--offer to a youthful and ardent spirit such as Fay's? None at all, except of a very passive sort, and the passive tense has no charm for any one under thirty. So I had not the heart to take away from my darling anything that added to the joy of a life that I feared might prove to be a little dull for her, and for her dear sake I swallowed the Loxleys and everything else connected with amateur theatricals.