Indeed, during those three weeks Maggie saw nothing of Martin's weaknesses, his suspicions and dreads, his temper and self-abasement. The nobility that Martin had in him was true nobility, his very weaknesses came from his sharp consciousness of what purity and self-sacrifice and asceticism really were, and that they were indeed the only things for man to live by. During those weeks he saw so truly the sweetness and fidelity and simplicity of Maggie that his conscience was killed, his scruples were numbed. He did not want during those weeks any sensual excitement, any depravity, any license. A quiet and noble asceticism seemed to him perfectly possible. He burst out once to Maggie with: "I can't conceive, Maggie, why I ever thought life complicated. You've straightened everything out for me, made all the troubles at home seem nothing, shown me what nonsense it was wanting the rotten things I was always after." But Maggie had no eloquence in reply--she could not make up fine sentences; it embarrassed her dreadfully to tell him even that she loved him, and when he was sentimental it was her habit to turn it off with a joke if she could. She wanted terribly to ask him sometimes what he had meant when he said that he didn't love her as he had loved other women. She had never the courage to ask him this. She wondered sometimes why it had hurt her when he had said he loved her as though she were a man friend, without any question of sex. "Surely that's enough for me," she would ask herself, "it means that it's much more lasting and safe." And yet it was not enough. Nevertheless, during these weeks she found his brotherly care of her adorable, he found her shyness divine. "Every other woman I have ever been in love with," he told her once, "I have always kept asking them would they ever change, and would they love me always, and all that kind of nonsense. A man always begins like that, and then the time comes when he wishes to God they would change, and they won't. But you're not like that, Maggie, I know you'll never change, and I know that I shall never want you to." "No, I shall never change," said Maggie.