But a man does not write like that unless his heart has heralded the way, and he is following it. Byron's trouble was not that he had failed to follow the road which his heart pointed, but that he had followed it into an _impasse_. He had reached a point at which the only way out was the way on; but he could not follow it alone, and his companion would not follow it with him. She had gone a little way with him, and then taken fright at his and her own temerity. It is a question whether we should pity her for her lack of courage or praise her for remembering her principles after she had yielded to temptation; but we should need more knowledge of the facts than we have in order to answer it with confidence. Exceptional people may do exceptional things with impunity--it is sometimes for lack of the nerve to do them that they make shipwreck of their lives; but though Byron was an exceptional man, we have no proof that Mary Chaworth was an exceptional woman. She had neither the romantic audacity of George Sand, nor that audacity of the superior person which upheld George Eliot in her bold misappropriation of another woman's name. Probably, if she had had it, Byron would have classed her with the "blues," and either have tired of her at once or turned away from her very quickly. She had, no doubt, exceptional charm, but no exceptional strength of character. She was just a weak woman launched into a situation to which the old rules did not apply, but afraid to break them, ashamed of having broken them, obstinate in her refusal to go on breaking them. Catastrophe, in those circumstances, was inevitable. The bold course might have led to it--for a weak woman, brought up in the fear of her neighbours, can only take a bold course at grave risks. The weak course--since the love of the heart and not merely the passion of the senses was at stake--was bound to lead to it, and did. The only question was whether the victims of the catastrophe would suffer in silence or would cry aloud; and the answer to that question, given the characters of the victims, could easily be predicted. Mary Chaworth would be silent, would make believe to the best of her ability, would wear a mask, and pose, and persuade the world that she was behaving naturally. Byron, disdaining to pretend, proclaiming the truth about his own heart even while respecting Mary's secret--proclaiming it quite naturally though rather noisily--would appear to the world to be posing. He did so; but before we observe him doing so, we may turn back to the Journal, and study a few more of its enigmatic passages with the help of the clues at our disposal: "I awoke from a dream! well! and have not others dreamed? but she did not overtake me.... Ugh! how my blood chilled,--and I could not wake--and--heigho!... I do not like this dream,--I hate its 'foregone conclusions.'"