He said, "You are order, they are caos." He did not say that he wanted both, but she came to see that he did. He said "I love you eternally, I could not say that to any other woman." She believed him. It did not occur to her that she might be pitied, she did not think of herself as a wronged or defeated woman. Her love connived at what she now took to be inevitable. Iris Murdoch, in The message to the planet, ed. Vintage Classics.