"Your past. . . ."
"She will forget it too. She will understand that I am no longer the man I was, that I do not wish to be."
"Then, really, what you wish is that she should share your life, the life of Lupin?"
"The life of the man that I shall be, of the man who will work so that she may be happy, so that she may marry according to her inclination. We will settle down in some nook or other. We will struggle together, side by side. And you know what I am capable of. . . ."
She repeated, slowly, with her eyes fixed on his:
"Then, really, you wish her to share Lupin's life?"
He hesitated a second, hardly a second, and declared, plainly:
"Yes, yes, I wish it, I have the right."
"You wish her to abandon all the children to whom she has devoted herself, all this life of work which she loves and which is essential to her happiness?"
"Yes, I wish it, it is her duty."