Neither men nor women always mean exactly what they say.

We are not angels.

Is it not best to let the matter drop ?" Unorna listened quietly, her eyes upon his face.
"You are not so hard with me as you were," she said thoughtfully, after a moment's hesitation, and there was a touch of gratitude in her voice.
As she felt the dim possibility of a return to her former relations of friendship with him, Beatrice and the scene in the church seemed to be very far away.

Again the Wanderer found it difficult to answer.
"It is not for me to be hard, as you call it," he said quietly.

There was a scarcely perceptible smile on his face, brought there not by any feeling of satisfaction, but by his sense of his own almost laughable perplexity.