“Have you any obligations towards her?”
“None whatever. She has violated me, so to speak, for all the advances came from her. She has only what her sister gives her from day to day, and if she got married she would not get that.”
“Have you got her with child?”
“I have taken good care not to do so, and that’s what has irritated her; she calls all my little stratagems detestable treason.”
“Nevertheless, you have made up your mind to marry her sooner or later?”
“I’d as soon hang myself. If I got married to her I should be four times as poor as I am now, and all my relations at Novara would laugh at me for bringing home a wife of her age. Besides, she is neither rich nor well born, and at Novara they demand the one or the other.”
“Then as a man of honour and as a man of sense, you ought to break with her, and the sooner the better.”
“I know, but lacking normal strength what am I to do? If I did not go and sup with her to-night, she would infallibly come after me to see what had happened. I can’t lock my door in her face, and I can’t tell her to go away.”
“No, but neither can I go on in this miserable way.
“You must make up your mind, and cut the Gordian knot, like Alexander.”