"She was quite right not to. I admit that. It's in the order of things. She followed her instinct rather than her heart--I'm ready to believe that--but there are times in life when instinct is a pretty good guide."
"Am I to understand that you're not--hurt?--or disappointed? Because in that case--"
"I don't know whether I am or not. That's frank. I'm feeling so many things all at once that I can hardly distinguish one emotion from another, or tell which is strongest. I only know--it's become quite plain to me--that a little creature like Evie couldn't find a happy home in my life, any more than a humming-bird, as you once called her, could make its nest among crags."
"Do you mean by that," she asked, slowly, "that you're--definitely--letting her go?"
"I mean that, Evie being what she is, and I being what life has made me--Isn't it perfectly evident? Can you fancy us tied together--now?"
"I never could fancy it. I haven't concealed that from you at any time. But since you loved her, and she loved you--"
"That was true enough--in its way. In its way, it's still true. Evie still loves the man I was, perhaps, and the man I was loves her. The difference is that the man I was isn't sitting here in front of you."
"One changes with years, of course. I didn't suppose one could change in a few months, like that."
"One changes with experience--above all, with that kind of experience which people generally call--suffering. That's the great Alchemist; and he often transmutes our silver into gold. In my case, Evie was silver; but I've found there's something else that stands for--"
"So that," she interposed, quickly, "you're not sorry that Evie--?"
He got up, restlessly, and stood with his back to the empty fireplace.
"It isn't a case for sorrow," he replied, after a minute's thinking, "as it isn't one for joy. It's one purely for acceptance. When I first knew Evie I was still something of a kid. It was so all the more because the kid element in me had never had full play. I was arrogant, and cock-sure and certain of my ability to manipulate the world to suit myself. That was all Evie saw, and she liked it. In as far as she had it in her to fall in love with anything, she fell in love with it."