I shall always love you just as much, whether you care for me or not, because you are the only woman I have ever met, or am ever likely to meet, who seems to me perfect." If this was Sybil's teaching, she had made the best of her time.
Carrington's tone and words pierced through all Mrs.Lee's armour as though they were pointed with the most ingenious cruelty, and designed to torture her.

She felt hard and small before him.

Life for life, his had been, and was now, far less bright than hers, yet he was her superior.

He sat there, a true man, carrying his burden calmly, quietly, without complaint, ready to face the next shock of life with the same endurance he had shown against the rest.

And he thought her perfect! She felt humiliated that any brave man should say to her face that he thought her perfect! She! perfect! In her contrition she was half ready to go down at his feet and confess her sins; her hysterical dread of sorrow and suffering, her narrow sympathies, her feeble faith, her miserable selfishness, her abject cowardice.