She straightened herself up, looked at him for a moment, and then said with unnatural calmness, as she wiped the tears from her eyes:
"Very well; but if you go I shall go with you."
"What! you would leave your home, your friends, your beloved Paris—give up all you have been accustomed to, and follow me to Germany?"
"To Germany—to the Inferno—wherever you like."
"You do not mean it seriously."
"I do mean it, very seriously. I cannot live without you."
"But you have duties, you have your children—"
"I have no children, I have only you. And if my children were a barrier between you and me, I would strangle them with my own hands."
She spoke with such savage determination that he shuddered. But the battle must be fought out. He must not yield now.
"There is nothing for it," he said after a pause, during which he stood with downcast eyes, fumbling nervously with the buttons of his morning coat. "Our position would be equally wretched wherever we were. Fate is stronger than we are. I do not see how we are to escape it. Wherever we went, we should have to hide the truth, and surround ourselves with a tissue of lies, and that I cannot stand. I would rather die."