His voice dwelt tenderly upon her name. His fever-haunted eyes were
tender, too, for just a moment. Then he grimaced.

"No, I am wrong--the tragedy strikes deeper. The root of it is that
there is in you and in all your glittering kind no malice, no will to do
harm nor to hurt anything, but just a bland and invincible and, upon the
whole, a well-meaning stupidity, informing a bright and soft and
delicately scented animal. So you work ruin among those men who serve
ideals, not foreplanning ruin, not desiring to ruin anything, not even
having sufficient wit to perceive the ruin when it is accomplished. You
are, when all is done, not even detestable, not even a worthy peg
whereon to hang denunciatory sonnets, you shallow-pated pretty creatures
whom poets--oh, and in youth all men are poets!--whom poets, now and
always, are doomed to hanker after to the detriment of their poesy. No,
I concede it: you kill without premeditation, and without ever
suspecting your hands to be anything but stainless. So in logic I must
retract all my harsh words; and I must, without any hint or reproach,
endeavour to bid you a somewhat more civil farewell."

She had regarded him, throughout this preposterous and uncalled-for
harangue, with sad composure, with a forgiving pity. Now she asked him,
very quietly, "Where are you going, Kit?"

"To the Golden Hind, O gentle, patient and unjustly persecuted virgin
martyr!" he answered, with an exaggerated how--"since that is the part
in which you now elect to posture."

"Not to that low, vile place again!"