LUCIE. Not for love.
BRIGNAC. This is most interesting. Go on.
LUCIE. You’re another victim of the state of society you are defending.
BRIGNAC. I don’t understand.
LUCIE. I was a penniless girl, and so I had no offers of marriage. When you proposed to me I was tired of waiting, and I didn’t want to be an old maid. I accepted you, but I knew you only came to me because the women with money wouldn’t have you. I made up my mind to love you and be loyal.
BRIGNAC. Well?
LUCIE. But when my first baby came you deceived me. Since then I have only endured you, and you owe my submission to my cowardice. It was only my first child I wanted, the others you forced upon me, and when each was coming you left me. It’s true I was unattractive, but that was not my fault. You left me day after day in my ugliness and loneliness, and when you came back to me from those other women, you were full of false solicitude about my health. I begged for a rest after nursing. I asked to be allowed to live a little for myself, to be a mother only with my own consent. You laughed at me in a vain, foolish way. You did not consider the future of your children or the life of your wife, but you forced upon me the danger and the suffering of bringing another child into the world. What was it to you? Just the satisfaction of your vanity. You could jest with your friends and make coarse witticisms about it. Fool!
BRIGNAC. That’s enough, thank you. You’re my wife—
LUCIE. I’ll not be your wife any longer, and I won’t have another child.
BRIGNAC. Why?