No one could look on it without feeling that, there, the human will had been pushed to its farthest limits of endurance.
Seeing it for the first time, Courtier said: "Fine thing--that! Only wants a soul." Miltoun nodded: "Sit down," he said.
Courtier sat down.
There followed one of those silences in which men whose spirits, though different, have a certain bigness in common--can say so much to one another: At last Miltoun spoke: "I have been living in the clouds, it seems.

You are her oldest friend.
The immediate question is how to make it easiest for her in face of this miserable rumour!" Not even Courtier himself could have put such whip-lash sting into the word 'miserable.' He answered: "Oh! take no notice of that.

Let them stew in their own juice.

She won't care." Miltoun listened, not moving a muscle of his face.
"Your friends here," went on Courtier with a touch of contempt, "seem in a flutter.

Don't let them do anything, don't let them say a word.