Катя и принц Сиама

‘Just peacefully giving up’, as her doctor described it, she may have recalled from her girlhood in Russia long ago, a wise old saying: ‘Never regret past happiness, but be grateful to have known it!’

As not infrequently happens, dramatic coincidence can play a part in real life which would be dismissed were it written in a book or play as being unlikely or far-fetched.

For when the rapture of passionate love inevitably subsides and the personality with its many failings emerges from the rosy clouds of euphoria, it is hard for both the lover and the beloved to submit so sublime an experience to the routines of daily life, blessed no longer by the magic ardour that brought them first together.