“Yes, that’s the strange part of it. I dislike him ... and yet....”

“Yet you’re in love with him!”

“Yet I belong to him.”

“And you tell me that you love me!”

She took his head in her two hands:

“Try to understand. It tires me so, trying to make you understand. I love you ... but I am his wife....”

“Are you forgetting what you were to me in Rome?...”

“I was everything to you: love, happiness, intense happiness.... There was the most intense harmony between us: I shall never forget it.... But I was not your wife.”

“Not my wife!”

“No, I was your mistress.... I was unfaithful to him.... Oh, don’t repulse me! Pity me, pity me!”