"Yes, I know that, but still it's rather comfortless."
"I like being lonely. I think it very cosy and comfortable."
"You think it cosy?"
"Yes."
"Here, in this bare room of yours?"
"Yes, here, in this bare room of mine."
"But, Dorine, that's not possible!"
"But, good gracious, Gerrit, don't I tell you that it is!"
She stamped her foot angrily and gave him a resentful glance. Behind her dark eyes he saw a whole world of secret bitterness, a fierce grudge which smouldered in the depths of her soul. And it suddenly struck him that she looked very old, though he knew that she was only just thirty-nine. Her hair, drawn into a knot at the back, was beginning to go grey, there were deep wrinkles in her forehead, now that she was out of temper; and the lines of her cheeks and chin and her sharp, bitter mouth gave her almost the look of an old woman. Her figure too appeared withered and shrunken. And he suddenly thought her so much to be pitied in her lonely life as an unmarried woman without interests, over whose head the years had passed bringing none of the sweetness of the changing seasons—for it seemed as if she had never known a spring, as if she would never know a summer, as if there would only be the dreary autumn which was now beginning to loom dimly before her, as if there had never been anything for her in life, as if there never would be anything for her, never anything but that weary passing of the monotonous, lonely days, so lonely and so monotonous that she created for herself a bustle and flurry that did not exist, interests that were not there, an activity which she imagined, running in and out of shop after shop, for a box of stationery or a skein of thread, with, in between, a casual charitable call, done in a fussy, unpractical fashion—he suddenly thought her so much to be pitied in her loveless, cheerless life that he said:
"Shall I tell you what would be nice of you? And sensible?... To pack up all your traps, say good-bye to your landlady below ... and come and live with us!"