Hilda was maddened at his irony.
"Can you not believe that I am eager to be happy in the way that other women are? That I long to feel the love that comes to every one but me?"
"No,—pardon me,—I cannot believe that."
"Insolent! I don't know why I try to justify myself to you. But listen. Can you imagine what it is to be without a heart? To make men love you for the sport of it, and not to care when they kill themselves for your sake,—truly not to care? And at the same time to have another part of yourself wanting to care,—yearning to feel pity?"
"Is that dual nature yours?"
"You are sneering. You always have thought of me as rejoicing in cruelty, I suppose."
"Certainly as indifferent to suffering."
"You have believed that I thought myself normal; that I was unconscious of my want of feeling."
"I never observed any recognition of your temperament evidenced in your conduct."
"But it is true, Baron. I swear to you that I know my need so well, so painfully well, that on the chance of Friedrich's saving me from all that it means, I was willing to force him to poverty, and to separate him from all that he held dear."