"But very truly, my dear."
"Yesterday your dear, today less than the dust—!"
"You are mistaken. I owe you too much—"
"You will never repay it now. Did I not foretell that, when I had told you everything, you would forget your pledge to me? 'Prove me ungrateful'—out of your own mouth, Michael!—'and you can ask nothing of me I will refuse to do in testimony to my penitence.'"
Still unresisting in her embrace, he asked: "And I am already proved ungrateful in your sight?"
"Do you not mean to forsake me, put me by now I am of no more use?"
"I have not said so."
"What else do you intend, when you tell me of your determination to go back to New York?"
"One must first pay one's debts—"
"Then the debt you owe my love and devotion stands second to the debt you owe self-love?"