“What brings you here? Have you come to complain of the beating your harlot got?”
“No, no, Marie; let’s be friends—good friends!”
“You are drunk,” she said coldly, turning away from him.
“Ay, Marie, I’m drunk with love of you—I’m drunk and dizzy with your beauty, my heart’s darling.”
“Yes, truly, so dizzy that your eyesight has failed you, and you have taken others for me.”
“Marie, Marie, leave your jealousy!”
She made a contemptuous gesture as if to brush him aside.
“Indeed, Marie, you were jealous. You betrayed yourself when you took that bridle rein, you know. But now let the whole filthy rabble be forgotten as dead and given over to the devil. Come, come, cease playing unkind to me as I have played the faithless rogue to you with all these make-believe pleasures and gallantries. We do nothing but prepare each other a pit of hell, whereas we might have an Eden of delight. Come, whatever you desire, it shall be yours. Would you dance in silks as thick as chamlet, would you have pearls in strings as long as your hair, you shall have them, and rings, and tissue of gold in whole webs, and plumes, and precious stones, whatever you will—nothing is too good to be worn by you.”
He tried to put his arm around her waist, but she caught his wrist and held him away from her.
“Ulrik Frederik,” she said, “let me tell you something. If you could wrap your love in ermine and marten, if you could clothe it in sable and crown it with gold, ay, give it shoes of purest diamond, I would cast it away from me like filth and dung, for I hold it less than the ground I tread with my feet. There’s no drop of my blood that’s fond of you, no fibre of my flesh that doesn’t cry out upon you. Do you hear? There’s no corner of my soul where you’re not called names. Understand me aright! If I could free your body from the pangs of mortal disease and your soul from the fires of hell by being as yours, I would not do it.”