"Of course, I said things, I protested, I implored. It simply couldn't be that I was not to see her again!... There was misery enough, but there was no heart in my entreaties, for I knew all the time that what she said must be, and why it must be. It was the only right thing in a wrong business, that last cruelty. Oh, I knew, I knew! And there was a quality of fatalism about Fay's voice, which made its softness as hard to pierce as adamant. I was quite dull and flat, listening to her numbly, so that her words seemed to write themselves vividly in my mind, unalterable words never to be forgotten, each one like a fate in itself. "It was more than martyrdom to an idea, it was a principle of living, that determined her to that course, the inevitable course; something in her much more human than can be found in such philandering with oneself as martyrdom, and that's why it was so inevitable, why I couldn't fight against it heartily and actively. It was simply that her whole being, the very insides and outsides, was in revolt against the treachery of any change in the road she had, however undecidedly once, set herself to travel; it was not possible for her to burn a single boat even on the certain chance of finding a palace in the romantic land--and so it was like a Roman Catholic marriage, as she had told me that afternoon, ages ago, when I had been so seriously concerned about her indecision to marry Carlo!... My dear old man, hers was an aristocrat among souls! "It was past six o'clock, and I was in an arm-chair watching her do her hair at the dressing-table, when she suddenly let it fall again over her shoulders, and came and knelt by the arm of my chair, and said: 'I'm not a very tiresome woman, really, because I know quite well that often in your life you will be saying beautiful things to beautiful women--but you will think it awfully bad luck if they believe you, won't you, Howard?