"Do not think unkindly of her. I don't think she really knew she was an ogress! After all, she did unlock the door and say, 'Go!' And—well, here I am, darling woman. And I'm going to marry you!"
"Did you never love her?"
"Never. I was so frightfully unhappy that the best I could do was not to hate her. I'm afraid she hated me—poor ogress! Well! That's all over and done with. Like an evil dream. I'm here, and you're going to marry me." Very gently he drew her arms around him again. "Ah, hold fast to me! Hold fast! I have waited for you so long, I need you so much!" he breathed.
"I don't seem able to help myself!" she sighed. And she asked seriously: "What do the people who love you most call you when they speak to you?"
The brown and bearded faces of comrades rose before him, their voices sounded in his ears.
"Pierre."
"Pierre," said she, bravely, as if to call him by his name emboldened her, "I too have been freed from a hateful marriage. Sometime I will tell you all about it. But—oh, do not let us talk about it now! I cannot bear to think of him! I cannot bear to have his shadow, even, fall upon me now, or come near you!" That gangling bridegroom in his ill-fitting suit, with his wincing mouth, his eyes full of disgust and aversion, his air of a man sentenced to death—or marriage with herself—came before her, and she shivered.
Despite her words a horrible jealousy of that unknown man assailed him. He asked fiercely:
"You loved him, once?"
"Oh, no! Oh, no! Never! I—why, Pierre, until you came, I didn't even know what love meant! Once that ignorant, undisciplined girl I spoke of, thought she loved a boy. She didn't. She loved the idea of love. And once again, Pierre, because my life was so empty, and because I didn't know any better, I thought I should be willing to marry somebody else. I thought that somebody else could fill my life. But now I know that could never be. You are here."