Madame Bovary turned away her head that he might not see the irrepressible smile she felt rising to her lips.
“Often,” he went on, “I wrote you letters that I tore up.”
She did not answer. He continued—
“I sometimes fancied that some chance would bring you. I thought I recognised you at street-corners, and I ran after all the carriages through whose windows I saw a shawl fluttering, a veil like yours.”
She seemed resolved to let him go on speaking without interruption. Crossing her arms and bending down her face, she looked at the rosettes on her slippers, and at intervals made little movements inside the satin of them with her toes.
At last she sighed.
“But the most wretched thing, is it not—is to drag out, as I do, a useless existence. If our pains were only of some use to someone, we should find consolation in the thought of the sacrifice.”
He started off in praise of virtue, duty, and silent immolation, having himself an incredible longing for self-sacrifice that he could not satisfy.
“I should much like,” she said, “to be a nurse at a hospital.”
“Alas! men have none of these holy missions, and I see nowhere any calling—unless perhaps that of a doctor.”