He wouldn't say that it's particularly reassuring to know, but at the same time John does feel more at ease, that Mary does at least understand where he's coming from. That the way of life he has known, for better or worse, the laws he has lived by and under, that they were not thus overturned in a day, as though they had not mattered in the first.

He sits politely listening to Mary's story of her Mr Barrow, unable to help the feeling that he would have liked to have had a friend like Mary, back in his own time.

"I appreciate you saying so," he says, offering her a soft smile in return, before glancing back down at the tea in his hands. "In a perfect world, would that everyone considered these things the same way as you do, my dear. It is not a particularly comfortable feeling, to live with the fear that those you care about might shun you so for something that, as far as I am concerned, you have very little control over."