"She asked me to assist her to sit up in the bed, in order that she might be able to speak with greater ease, for her voice, broken and gasping, was gurgling in her throat.
"I saw that I was in the house of a very rich person. The luxurious apartment, with a certain simplicity in its luxury, was upholstered with materials solid as the walls, and their soft surface imparted a caressing sensation, so that every word uttered seemed to penetrate their silent depths and to disappear and die there.
"The dying woman went on:
"'You are the first to hear my horrible story. I will try to have strength enough to go on to the end of it. You must know everything so that you, whom I know to be a kind-hearted man as well as a man of the world, should have a sincere desire to aid me with all your power.
"'Listen to me.
"'Before my marriage, I loved a young man, whose suit was rejected by my family because he was not rich enough. Not long afterwards, I married a man of great wealth. I married him through ignorance, through obedience, through indifference, as young girls do marry.
"'I had a child, a boy. My husband died in the course of a few years.
"'He whom I had loved had got married, in his turn. When he saw that I was a widow, he was crushed by horrible grief at knowing he was not free. He came to see me; he wept and sobbed so bitterly before my eyes that it was enough to break my heart. He at first came to see me as a friend. Perhaps I ought not to have seen him. What would you have? I was alone, so sad, so solitary, so hopeless! And I loved him still. What sufferings we women have sometimes to endure!
"'I had only him in the world, my parents also being dead. He came frequently; he spent whole evenings with me. I should not have let him come so often, seeing that he was married. But I had not enough of will-power to prevent him from coming.
"'How am I to tell you what next happened?... He became my lover. How did this come about? Can I explain it? Can anyone explain such things? Do you think it could be otherwise when two human beings are drawn towards each other by the irresistible force of a passion by which each of them is possessed? Do you believe, monsieur, that it is always in our power to resist, that we can keep up the struggle for ever, and refuse to yield to the prayers, the supplications, the tears, the frenzied words, the appeals on bended knees, the transports of passion, with which we are pursued by the man we adore, whom we want to gratify even in his slightest wishes, whom we desire to crown with every possible happiness, and whom, if we are to be guided by a worldly code of honor, we must drive to despair. What strength would it not require? What a renunciation of happiness? what self-denial? and even what virtuous selfishness?