the woman

"Because most people are morons," he answered, with no more affect of feeling than if he had told her that the Earth goes round the Sun or that the sky is blue. "Once you've planted an idea in their heads it's incredibly difficult to shift it -- faking one's own death, for instance. I'll be riding that illusion for a considerable amount of time, I think. It will become entrenched; ordinary people are so charmingly sentimental." He said this almost wistfully, as if he pitied the lot of them.