HE
Choose. There is yet time. Choose.
I
I have chosen.
At that very instant, all pleasure vanished, and I felt ill, with that overwhelming illness that follows nights of debauch. Nothing, however, had changed around me, and I was standing among the same marbles, though they were frozen and made me almost ashamed and almost afraid. I heard the laughter of the young women in the neighbouring hall, but it seemed to me to come from a bevy of hoydens. My master, still seated there, was looking at me, but with eyes in which I thought I saw I know not what cruel mockery, I know not what mournful reproaches. I was seized with anguish, I breathed with difficulty, I was cold, the memory of my nocturnal lusts disgusted my heart. I was about to faint, perhaps, when my master spoke.
HE
So you have chosen. It is well. Good-bye.
I
Oh! No! Not yet!
HE