"In loving you I wanted everything about you to be brighter, easier and more perfect; and just when I rapturously believed I had succeeded, you come and brusquely ask me to remove the light from another being. That's what you are really asking me to do.
"More. The man in whose name I built my house—don't be afraid it's his suffering I dread; I love him enough to rise above pity. But I thought I told you that he is necessary to my effulgence; you understand, necessary.... Remember, he is the one to whom I told the truth, in whose presence I could live while at the same time holding your presence, who has suffered through me without loving me the less, and prefers my happiness to his own heart's happiness. That's the sort of man he is. That sort of man exists. And you would deprive me of him!
"But if, to get me away from him, you were to offer something superior, a more perfect means of elevating me and teaching me to know, I should go unafraid, perhaps without hesitating. Love is the thing that elevates life.... But you, what do you offer? Feeling, instinct. Instinct is not a reason...."
I had risen while speaking. My cheeks and forehead were burning. His face, plunged in the snowy curtain, was quite changed. Was it the look in his eyes or the folds around his mouth?
"Then you don't love me?..." He repeated this like a child taken with the words, and dropped his head in his hands.
That the light fell about me in gray veils may have been only a fleeting phenomenon. It cannot be that love will desert you suddenly.
The rest of his stay was of no avail, and when awkwardness fell between us, he rose, pressed his hands down on my shoulders, and gave me a long, sombre stare. Then he left. I heard the door close slowly.
Then he doesn't understand? But the love I feel for him is a true love. It is not that unstable impulse which passion carries off in a puff of wind. My love, like my life, craves all the victories I have gained, all the people who are dear to me. And my eyes take in whatever they can of sky and color.... Nothing forbids me to breathe. Why am I forbidden to love whatever I love?
My love, you will conquer, you will make yourself understood. You are not this man who is leaving, nor the other man, nor anyone; you are a heart of flesh exposed ... a restless heart without limit, a heart forever beating and forever aimless. Do not let a single one who has ever been with you fade and drop away. If love cannot conquer, what else is there to resort to?
And I ran out to overtake him.