She tried to soften the statue by every feminine artifice, even, at last, by kissing its irresponsive face. He, invincibly simple, smiled at the wiles he thought were used to try him; and stiffened himself into the pose he had been convinced was her desire. If it ever had been, she outlived it before long. Its end was advertised by an hysterical outbreak, which Terence never could recall without a shudder. They were both, at the time, in town, where they met two or three times a week, and he had called to bring her some tickets. She was sitting on a lounge in a remote corner of the room, and gave him her hand with blank indifference. Unequal always to resolve her moods, he sustained a monologue from the fireplace on the trifles of the hour, until her persistent silence compelled him to ask its cause. She replied listlessly, after some pressing, that it must be of no importance since he could ignore it. She had merely been deceived in him, that was all: a common thing with a woman. He had proved himself to be just a man, like every other; and not the man of men she had supposed him. It had amused him, no doubt, to win her love; now, it seemed, he was tired of it. He had spoilt her life, he had destroyed her faith; but such things, of course, weren't worth mentioning: the great matter was, naturally, that a man should not be bored. Now, she supposed, they might as well end the farce between them, so that he could amuse himself elsewhere. All she had lived for was over for ever, and she did not care what became of her. She poured out the indictment to his bewildered ears in the level tones of utter apathy; but when it was done she flung herself violently across the head of the lounge in a tempest of passionate tears. Terence, despairing of any further fitness or sanity in the affair, resigned himself to the situation with a sigh, and knelt beside her for an hour, until she appeared to draw from his caresses a renewed confidence in life. He left her, sufficiently depressed himself, and expecting anything but a letter which reached him on the morrow by the earliest post. It must have been written very shortly after his departure, which she had done her utmost to delay, yet it proclaimed her as too shamed by what had happened ever to meet him again, unless he felt himself strong enough to prevent such scenes in the future. Feeling strong enough for nothing, he left her letter unanswered for a day, and received, on the next, eight pages of aggrieved reproaches for having forsaken her in the hour of her greatest need. That was but the prelude to many meetings of as strange a kind. He never knew in what mood he should find her, nor in which she might wish to find him.