"She must utter a cry, though."
"Yes, I understand; it sounds more moral.... Come! go on, go on, good dog!"
I began the fourth act. At the scene where the insult takes place, she put her hands round my neck and I felt her bosom rising and falling, as well as her heart beating against my shoulder; I could feel it almost bursting through her garments. At the scene between the vicomtesse and Adèle, where Adèle three times repeats, "But I have done nothing to injure this woman!" I stopped.
"Good Lord! man, why do you keep on stopping?" she exclaimed.
"I stop because you are strangling me!" I replied.
"Why, so I am," she said; "but such things have never been done on the stage yet. Oh! it is too real, it is horrible, it stifles one, oh!..."
"But you must listen to the end, nevertheless."
"Willingly enough."
So I finished reading the act.
"Oh!" she said, "you may be quite at rest, I can answer for myself. Oh! how feelingly I will say, 'She is his mistress!' Your plays are not difficult to act, but they break one's heart.... Oh! let me have my cry out!... You great big dog, where have you learnt to know women like this? You know them through and through!"