She could not bring herself definitely to break with Montagu, and he would neither wed her nor give her up.

The correspondence continued with unabated vigour.
"I am in pain about the letter I sent you this morning," she wrote in March, 1911.

"I fear you should think, after what I have said, you cannot, in point of honour, break off with me.

Be not scrupulous on that article, nor affect to make me break first, to excuse your doing it; I would owe nothing but to inclination: if you do not love me, I may have the less esteem of myself, but not of you: I am not of the number of those women that have the opinion of their persons Mr.Bayes had of his play, that 'tis the touchstone of sense, and they are to frame their judgment of people's understanding according to what they think of them.
"You may have wit, good humour, and good nature, and not like me.

I allow a great deal for the inconstancy of mankind in general, and my own want of merit in particular.