“No use warning you, my dear fellow, I suppose?”
“Evidently not,” I answered moodily. “I must work out my fate alone.”
“At least—open your eyes.”
“In what way?”
“Neither she nor you is the slightest in love.”
“What do you call it, then, when one moment you are ready to do murder, and the next you are as weak as a child, ready to believe anything, undergo anything, afraid of everything?”
“My dear friend, I went through that, at the age of sixteen, with a little girl in a laiterie who could not write five words correctly and who ran off with a lawyer’s clerk. The trouble is you are still sixteen. You know, I do not discuss women lightly; my principles are fixed on that point. But you have come to me as a friend and as a friend I am once more going to warn you.”
“Go on,” I said, shrugging my shoulders.
“My dear David,—you have no place in this society of ours,” he said, taking my arm. “You have a heart, and you have no knowledge of the conventions of the game. We do not love in this crowd; we play at love; just as we do not discuss; we play at discussing. We meet, to fence lightly and gracefully, with tremendous lunges,—which are always parried. We do not seek a woman because we want her but because twenty other men want her and—we wish to carry off the prize. You are seeking romance, and—it has never crossed our thresholds. This society is old: it refines only on its emotions. It is egotistical, selfish, superficial, and self-indulgent. There isn’t a man or woman in it who doesn’t love himself or herself better than anything else in the world. Madame de Tinquerville may be better, or worse, than the rest of her set. I do not know. If you were an American nabob, perhaps she might make up her mind to marry you. Luckily, you are not. There is something primitive enough in you to resist and rebel. There is still something young in you,—a piece of a real heart left. When she has completely broken you, dominated you and corrupted you, you will cease to interest her. Bid her good-by before she closes the door in your face.”
“Every word you say is the truth,” I said impulsively, “but,—then—”