She looked, for the minute, as her companion had looked--as if twenty protests, blocking each other's way, had surged up within her.

But when Charlotte had to make a selection, her selection was always the most effective possible.

It was happy now, above all, for being made not in anger but in sorrow.

"You give me up then ?" "Give you up-- ?" "You forsake me at the hour of my life when it seems to me I most deserve a friend's loyalty?
If you do you're not just, Fanny; you're even, I think," she went on, "rather cruel; and it's least of all worthy of you to seem to wish to quarrel with me in order to cover your desertion." She spoke, at the same time, with the noblest moderation of tone, and the image of high, pale, lighted disappointment she meanwhile presented, as of a creature patient and lonely in her splendour, was an impression so firmly imposed that she could fill her measure to the brim and yet enjoy the last word, as it is called in such cases, with a perfection void of any vulgarity of triumph.

She merely completed, for truth's sake, her demonstration.