"I don't disapprove. It's not my nature to disapprove of what other people think best in their own judgment."
"Let us talk openly and frankly. You call Mamma a woman who lives for her passions. Perhaps you call me the same."
"I don't know much about your life."
"I have lived with men. If I had had Mamma's ideas, or rather her unconscious conventions, I should have married them. I loved and was loved. Twice I could have married, as Mamma did; but I didn't do it."
"You were disheartened by what you had seen."
"Yes; and I didn't know, I never knew. Perhaps now, Lot, perhaps now I feel certain for the first time."
"Do you feel certain, Ottilie?" said Elly.
She took Ottilie's hand. She thought Ottilie so beautiful, so very beautiful and so genuine that she was greatly affected by her.
"Perhaps, Elly, I now know for certain that I shall never love any one else as I love Aldo.... He loves me ..."
"And you will get married?" asked Lot.