“You were not at all friendly to him this evening, Cordt.”
She said this in order to say something and without thinking, but regretted it at the same moment and looked at him dejectedly. But he made a gesture with his hand and answered, calmly:
“Indeed I was. As friendly as he could wish and a great deal more so than I feel.”
He stood by the mantel and looked down before him. She took his hand and laid her cheek against it:
“Martens is nothing to me,” she said.
“No,” said Cordt. “Not really. It is not the man ... it is men. It has not gone so far as that. But it has gone farther.”
“I don’t understand you,” she said, sadly.
“It is not a man, a good man or a bad one, that is wooing your heart and has won or is trying to win it. Martens is not my rival. He does not love you and he is not trying to make you believe that he is. He does not lie. That is not called for nowadays, except among the lower classes. With us, we rarely see so much as the shade of a scandal. Whence should we derive the strength that is needed for a rupture, a separation, a flight from society? It’s a soldier that tells his girl that she is his only love ... a journeyman smith that kills his faithless sweetheart ... a farm-girl that drowns herself when her lover jilts her for another.”
He drew away his hand and folded his arms across his chest.
“Martens is no Don Juan. It is not his passion that infatuates women, not his manly courage and strength that wins them. He carries his desires to the back-streets; he takes his meals with his wife. He cannot love. The women become his when he covets them, but he has never belonged to any woman. His eyes, his words, his ditties sing love’s praises with a charming, melancholy languor which no woman can resist. Then he lays his head in her lap and tells her of his perpetual yearnings and his perpetual disappointments. He unbosoms himself to her and begs her not to betray him. Then she loves him. And she is his ... to any extent he pleases.”