It is everything, my whole life! It is not as if we were bad people! We are both upright! We always have been! We have both done our best, but--I can't go on.

What is reputation worth, the world's opinion of me ?--_nothing_." It was not worth more to Fay at that moment than it has ever been worth to any other poor mortal since the world's opinion first clashed with love.
To follow love shows itself time and time again alike to the pure and to the worldly as the only real life, the only path.

But if we disbelieve in it, and framing our lives on other lines become voluntarily bedridden into selfishness and luxury, can we--when that in which we have not believed comes to pass--can we suddenly rise and follow Love up his mountain passes?
We try to rise when he calls us from our sick beds.
We even go feverishly a little way with him.

But unless we have learnt the beginnings of courage and self-surrender before we set out, we seem to turn giddy, and lose our footing.

Certain precipices there are where only the pure and strong in heart may pass, at the foot of which are the piled bones of many passionate pilgrims.
Were Fay's delicate little bones, so subtly covered in soft white flesh, to be added to that putrefying heap?
But can we blame anyone, be they who they may, placed howsoever they may be, who when first they undergo a real emotion try however feebly to rise to meet it?
Fay was not wholly wise, not wholly sincere, but she made an attempt to meet it.