“'Oh, I know—the fault is all mine! Another kind of woman—the right kind for you—the kind you thought I was—would not have asked for all that was a necessity for me; would have been big enough to have done without it; would have lost herself in your love for all humanity. That is the kind of woman you thought I was. And I tried to be. But I wasn't. I wasn't that big.
“'I did sympathize with your work; I could understand it; I loved to hear you tell about it. But I loved it because it was you that told me about it. You didn't see that! You thought I was a goddess. It was enough for your nature to worship me; to set me upon a pedestal and to call me your inspiration; oh, you treated me well—you were faithful to me—you were generous! But you neglected me in a way that men do not understand; that some men will never understand. While you were giving your days and your nights, and every fiber of your brain and body, to what you called the cause of the people, you more and more forgot you had a wife. Again and again and again I tried to win you back to what you were when I married you—to the time when your cause was not all—but you wouldn't see; I couldn't make you feel.
“'Then I thought I would show you that other men were not such fools as to overlook what was wasted on you. But you never noticed; you trusted me too much; you were too much engrossed. And then I began to hate you. I loved you more than I ever did before, and at the same time I hated you. Can you understand that? Do you see how women can hate and love at the same time? Well, they can.
“'At last—for I was a fool—I took a lover!”
“'What was his name?' I broke in.
“'His name?' she cried; 'that does not matter! What matter if there was one of them, or two of them. That is nothing!—the name is nothing—they were nothing—nothing but tools; the symbols of my rage, of my hatred for you; whether I loved or hated you, you were all—always.'
“'They were merely convenient clubs with which to murder my honor in the dark—is that it?' I said.
“'Yes,' she said, 'that is it, if you choose to put it so.' And she spoke with a humility foreign to her nature.
“'And what now?' I asked.
“'Now,' she said, 'now that I have spoken; now that I have told you everything; now that I have told you that I have gone on loving you more and more and more—now—I am going to die.'