herself. "This is not just a
common love affair like other people's. It is everything, my whole life!
It is not as if we were bad people! We are both upright! We always have
been! We have both done our best, but--I can't go on. What is reputation
worth, the world's opinion of me?--_nothing_."

It was not worth more to Fay at that moment than it has ever been worth
to any other poor mortal since the world's opinion first clashed with
love.

To follow love shows itself time and time again alike to the pure and to
the worldly as the only real life, the only path. But if we disbelieve
in it, and framing our lives on other lines become voluntarily
bedridden into selfishness and luxury, can we--when that in which we
have not believed comes to pass--can we suddenly rise and follow Love up
his mountain passes? We try to rise when he calls us from our sick beds.
We even go feverishly a little way with him. But unless we have learnt
the beginnings of courage and self-surrender before we set out, we seem
to turn giddy, and lose our footing. Certain precipices there are where
only the pure and strong in heart may pass, at the foot of which are the
piled bones of many passionate pilgrims.

Were Fay's delicate little bones, so subtly covered in soft white flesh,
to be added to that putrefying heap? But can we blame anyone, be they
who they may, placed howsoever they may be, who when first they undergo
a real emotion try however feebly to rise to meet it?

Fay was not wholly wise, not wholly sincere, but she made an attempt to
meet it. It was not to be expected that the attempt would be quite wise
or quite sincere either. Still it was the best she could do. She would
sacrifice herself for love. She would go away with Michael. No one would
ever speak to her again, but she did not care.

Involuntarily she unclasped a diamond Saint-Esprit from her throat which
the duke had given her, and laid it on her writing-table. She should
never wear it again. She no longer had the right to wear it. It was a
unique jewel. But what did she care for jewels now! They had served to
pass the time in the sort of waking dream in which she had lived till
Michael came. But she was awake now. She looked at herself in the glass
long and fixedly. Yes, she was beautiful. How dreadful it must be for
plain women when they loved! They must know that men could not really
care for them. They might, of course, respect and esteem them, and wish
in a lukewarm way