She’d treated him as if he were beneath her, worthy of insincere pity, but, following what she was bid by those who told her what to think, he was worth nothing else … not worth her. She was too good for him. She was too mature, too important, too important for a man who did not have what she was used to, did not live up to her ideal of what a man was supposed to be, a mature man. It mattered in no way that he had, essentially, raised himself and his brother. It made no difference that he, without the benefit of trust funds, had put himself through school under his own power. No, he had not been provided with every advantage to squander, the inability to fail given to those she knew by their connections, whether they earned them or not. He was immature. She knew that she had squandered her own dreams, her own schooling, in trade for an ugly man with a nasty fetish. And she knew that she had traded that man for even worse, even uglier—playing house with an absolute man child and his family-provided business, believing that providing the degenerate with children made her mature. And she knew it was the truth, though hearing it only made her resent the speaker more, as she was above reproach, above truth, somehow. It made no difference that, when the financial aspects and social obligations were stripped away, she had more in common with him when it came to what really mattered, what she’d said drove her, what kindled her empathy, her passions. No, maturity was selling oneself, and he was simply not enough. And when he’d finally rejected her in return, he was not even worth pity, only disdain and lies, only spying and endless defamation, only having his property destroyed by her “mature” friends, certainly not her compassion and absolutely never her love. No matter the loyalty, the sincerity, the affinity that had led him to her, nor her own God’s plan, he would remain beneath her in her mind, while she, who had called him materialistic, soiled herself with pampered infants, and sold away her dreams, continued to pursue more of that, more of what did not matter with those who would never see her as really worth them and took her out of pity. The devil sneered with the irony, and bid her to continue.