“I do not enter into the details of why a woman wants to see her lover.”
“I meant, I only....” she said, flushing hotly. This coarseness of his angered her, and gave her courage. “Surely you must feel how easy it is for you to insult me?” she said.
“An honest man and an honest woman may be insulted, but to tell a thief he’s a thief is simply la constatation d’un fait.”
“This cruelty is something new I did not know in you.”
“You call it cruelty for a husband to give his wife liberty, giving her the honorable protection of his name, simply on the condition of observing the proprieties: is that cruelty?”
“It’s worse than cruel—it’s base, if you want to know!” Anna cried, in a rush of hatred, and getting up, she was going away.
“No!” he shrieked, in his shrill voice, which pitched a note higher than usual even, and his big hands clutching her by the arm so violently that red marks were left from the bracelet he was squeezing, he forcibly sat her down in her place.
“Base! If you care to use that word, what is base is to forsake husband and child for a lover, while you eat your husband’s bread!”
She bowed her head. She did not say what she had said the evening before to her lover, that he was her husband, and her husband was superfluous; she did not even think that. She felt all the justice of his words, and only said softly:
“You cannot describe my position as worse than I feel it to be myself; but what are you saying all this for?”