"NA!—Well, if this is another of your manifestations of genius, then permit me to hate—no, to loathe it, in all its forms."
"GANZ NACH BELIEBEN! It's a privilege of your sex, you know. There never was a woman yet who didn't prefer a good, square talent."
"A crack this way, and it's madness; that, and the world says genius. And some people have a peculiar gift for discovering it. Those who set themselves to it can find genius in a flea's jump."
"But has it never occurred to you, that the power of loving—that some women have a genius for loving?—No, why do I ask! For if I am a book, you are a poster—a placard."
"What a people you are for words! You make phrases about everything. That's a ridiculous thing to say. If every fickle woman—"
"Fickle woman! fickle fiddle-sticks!" he interrupted. "That's only a tag. The people whose business it is to decide these things—DIE HERREN DICHTER—are not agreed to this day whet it's man who's fickle or woman. In this mood it's one, in that, the other; and the silly world bleats it after them, like sheep."
"Well, if you wish me to put it more plainly: if what you say were true, vice would be condoned."
"Vice!!" he cried with derision, and sat up and faced her. "Vice!—my dear Mada!—sweet, innocent child! ... No, no. A special talent is needed for that kind of thing; an unlimited capacity for suffering; an entire renunciation of what is commonly called happiness! You hold the good old Philistine opinions. You think, no doubt, of two lovers living together in delirious pleasure, in SAUS UND BRAUS.—Nothing could be falser. A woman only needs to have the higher want in her nature, and the suffering is there, too. She's born gifted with the faculty. And a woman of the type we're speaking of, is as often as not the flower of her kind.—Or becomes it.—For see all she gains on her way: the mere passing from hand to hand; the intense impressionable nature; the process of being moulded—why, even the common prostitute gets a certain manly breadth of mind, such as you other women never arrive at. Each one who comes and goes leaves her something: an experience—a turn of thought—it may be only an intuition—which she has not had before."
"And the contamination? The soul?" cried Madeleine; two red spots had come out on her cheeks.
"As you understand it, such a woman has no soul, and doesn't need one. All she needs is tact and taste."