It goes without saying that I forgave my darling, for the good reason that I had nothing to forgive. That part of the business was easy enough. It also goes without saying that Fay got her own way about the proposed trip to the South of France: but that part of the business was by no means easy. Annabel was greatly surprised when I broke it to her that Fay did not wish to go abroad. But she was more than surprised, she was indignant, when she discovered that I intended to let my wife do as she pleased in the matter. If Fay did not want to go to France, to France she should not go: that I said and that I stuck to. But the sticking was hard work. I had always known that Annabel was obstinate: but until that unhappy spring I had no idea how colossally obstinate she could be. Nothing that I said had the slightest effect upon her. She merely waited until I had finished speaking, and then said her own say over again, as if I had never spoken. Fay was quite right. If Annabel thought that a person ought to want a thing, she firmly believed that, therefore, they did want it: and nothing that the person or that any other person could urge to the contrary in any way shook her in this belief. I suppose I was like my sister in this respect. Fay said I was, and so I must have been. But I am sure that I made every effort to struggle against this narrow-mindedness, and I am equally sure that Annabel made no such effort at all. On the contrary, she gloried in it. "It is nonsense to say that young people don't enjoy being taken abroad, Reggie," she declared over and over again: "absolute nonsense. It is only natural that the young should enjoy variety of place and scene." "It may be natural, but it isn't true in this particular instance," I vainly argued: "I have told you till I'm sick of telling you that Fay doesn't want to go abroad just now: and if she doesn't want to go, she shan't go." "I am sure you are making a mistake, Reggie, and that you will live to regret it." "I have no doubt that I am. As a matter of fact I am always making mistakes and living to regret them. But that won't hinder me from making this one mistake more." "She would enjoy it when once she got there: I know she would. I used to love travelling on the Continent when I was a girl." "I dare say you did, but that has nothing to do with it. You and Fay are absolutely different people." "Of course we are now, because I am so much older than she is: but when we were the same age, I expect Fay was very similar to me." And then I had it all over again about the normal desire of the young for variety of place and scene. I recognised the futility of argument. If Annabel believed that at any time or at any age she and Fay bore the slightest resemblance to one another, she could believe anything that she wished to believe: and she did.