‘And my shame is nothing to you?’
‘Nothing, being what it is, not yours, but of others, thrust upon your innocence.’
‘You would not, for your own sake, wish that we had never known of it?’
‘For my sake? No. For yours—I would die to wash it out. For my sake, do you say? Oh, Greif, is one hair of your head, one look of your dear eyes less wholly mine, because your mother sinned? Are you not Greif to me, always, and nothing else?’
‘And so you love me still—just as you did before?’
‘Can I say more than I have said? Can I do more than I have done? Ah—then love must be too cold a word for what I mean!’
‘You would not love me if I lied, and were a coward.’
‘You would not be Greif.’
‘Nor should I be my miserable self, if I acted this lie before your mother!’
‘You would not be Greif, if you could kill her with the vanity of selfish truth-telling.’