"'I seem very meek and mild, but I'm really very full of myself,' she explained shyly. 'I've been introspecting, you see, and of course I've made an awful mess of it. Knowing oneself doesn't help, it simply complicates.... I've found, for instance, that once I do a thing--well, it's done! It's like a thing written in a book (or in a play by you!), always there, by me. I mean that once I've stuck myself to a thing, I am--do you mind?--a "sticker." I don't change or break away--I can't. And it's very frightening and discouraging to realize that, because it sort of cuts away from under the feet all the trap-doors which other people can escape through. I feel very pathetic ... and even you don't know what I'm talking about.' "'But I do, Fay, I do!' I said quickly. And I knew even better than she, with her mother's self-deprecatory confidence on 'loyalty' in my ears! "'The feeling,' she went on encouraged, 'is that, not quite like other people, once I'm married--well, just suppose that I even in the least bit wanted to get unmarried again! I couldn't. It's like a Roman Catholic marriage, for ever and ever. Of course,' she added quickly, sincerely, 'it's the very dimmest nightmare. I'm quite happy to marry Carlo, and I can't really imagine that I could begin to be unhappy with him--but just suppose! I'm much too fond of him even now to want to hurt him, and as I grow fonder of him I shall never be able to hurt him. Never. His eyes wouldn't let me....' "And as I looked at her I couldn't help thinking that the world would be a splendid place if women realised the responsibility of being loved as did this girl. For that, mainly, was what it was, the burden of the responsibility of being utterly loved for the first time.