His tentative observations were checked at the outset.
'Can such things be spoken of to me, Roland?
I am plighted.

You know it.' He shrugged, said a word of pity for Nevil, and went forth to let his friend know that it was as he had predicted: Renee was obedience in person, like a rightly educated French girl.

He strongly advised his friend to banish all hope of her from his mind.

But the mind he addressed was of a curious order; far-shooting, tough, persistent, and when acted on by the spell of devotion, indomitable.

Nevil put hope aside, or rather, he clad it in other garments, in which it was hardly to be recognized by himself, and said to Roland: 'You must bear this from me; you must let me follow you to the end, and if she wavers she will find me near.' Roland could not avoid asking the use of it, considering that Renee, however much she admired and liked, was not in love with him.
Nevil resigned himself to admit that she was not: and therefore,' said he, 'you won't object to my remaining.' Renee greeted Nevil with as clear a conventional air as a woman could assume.
She was going, she said, to attend High Mass in the church of S.Moise, and she waved her devoutest Roman Catholicism to show the breadth of the division between them.