"You never loved me, you shallow woman! 'I did!' As if there could be a cessation of a love! What are we to reckon on as ours? We prize a woman's love; we guard it jealously, we trust to it, dream of it; there is our wealth; there is our talisman! And when we open the casket it has flown!—barren vacuity!—we are poorer than dogs. As well think of keeping a costly wine in potter's clay as love in the heart of a woman! There are women—women! Oh, they are all of a stamp coin! Coin for any hand! It's a fiction, an imposture—they cannot love. They are the shadows of men. Compared with men, they have as much heart in them as the shadow beside the body. Laetitia!"
"Sir Willoughby."
"You refuse my offer?"
"I must."
"You refuse to take me for your husband?"
"I cannot be your wife."
"You have changed? . . . you have set your heart? . . . you could marry? . . . there is a man? . . . you could marry one! I will have an answer, I am sick of evasions. What was in the mind of Heaven when women were created, will be the riddle to the end of the world! Every good man in turn has made the inquiry. I have a right to know who robs me—We may try as we like to solve it.—Satan is painted laughing!—I say I have a right to know who robs me. Answer me."
"I shall not marry."
"That is not an answer."
"I love no one."