“It isn’t. It’s quite possible. And he told me so ... and I felt it....”
“But the fellow’s hypnotizing you!”
“No, it’s not hypnotism. It’s not a delusion: it’s a reality, deep, deep down within myself. Look here, you know me: you know how I feel. I love you and you only. That alone is love. I have never loved any one else. I am not a woman who is susceptible to.... I’m not hysterical. But with him ... No other man, no man whom I have ever met, rouses that feeling in me ... that feeling that I am not myself. That I belong to him, that I am his property, his chattel.”
She threw her arms about him, she hid herself like a child in his breast:
“It is so strange.... You know me, don’t you? I can be plucky and I am independent and I am never at a loss for an answer. But with him I am no longer sure of myself, I no longer have a life of my own. And I do what he tells me to.”
“But that is hypnotism: you can escape that, if you seriously wish to. I will help you.”
“It is not hypnotism. It is a truth, deep down inside me. It exists inside me. I know that it is so, that it has to be so.... Duco, it is impossible. I can’t become your wife. I mustn’t become your wife ... less now than ever. Perhaps....”
“Perhaps what?”
“Perhaps I always felt like that, without knowing it, that it must not be. Both for you and for me ... and for him too.... Perhaps that was what I felt, without knowing it, when I talked as I used to, about my antipathy for marriage.”
“But that antipathy arose from your marriage ... with him!”