"But you just confessed it! Since you deceived both of us, you must have deceived me! That is a logical conclusion."
She fought my arguments desperately, and demanded that I should prove them.
"Prove them!..."
Her treachery, surpassing the lowest depths of degradation of which I held a human heart capable, weighed on me like a crushing load. I bowed my head, I fell on my knees, I whined for mercy.
"You believed in the tittle-tattle of that woman! You believed that I wanted to be rid of you! And yet I have never been anything to you but a true friend, a faithful husband; I can't live without you! You complained of my jealousy ... while I regarded all women who run after me, trying to make love to me, as evil spirits. You believed what that woman said!... Tell me, did you really believe it?"
She was moved to compassion, and, all at once, yielding to a prompting to tell the truth, she confessed that she had never really believed it.
"And you deceived me.... Confess it, I'll forgive you.... Deliver me from the terrible, pitiless thoughts which torment me.... Confess it...."
She confessed nothing, and merely confined herself to calling my friend a "scoundrel."
A scoundrel he, my most intimate, my closest friend!
Oh, that I lay before her dead! Life was unbearable....