STRANGER. And then?
LADY. I hated you! That is, I wanted to be rid of all the evil you'd given me, but I couldn't.
STRANGER. So that's how it was! But we'll never really know the truth.
LADY. Have you noticed how impossible it is to find things out? You can live with a person and their relations for twenty years, and yet not know anything about them.
STRANGER. So you've discovered that? As you see so much, tell me this: how was it you came to love me?
LADY. I don't know; but I'll try to remember. (Pause.) Well, you had the masculine courage to be rude to a lady. In me you sought the companionship of a human being and not merely of a woman. That honoured me; and, I thought, you too.
STRANGER. Tell me also whether you held me to be a misogynist?
LADY. A woman-hater? Every healthy man is one, in the secret places of his heart; and all perverted men are admirers of women.
STRANGER. You're not trying to flatter me, are you?
LADY. A woman who'd try to flatter a man's not normal.