"Precisely," interrupted Sixtine, "I am and was a woman, and I committed the crimes of a woman who does not know the meaning of the word 'duty.' I was taught it, I forgot it, never having understood it."
"If you have forgotten it," said Entragues, "I will not try to have you learn it anew, before knowing you better. Duty for me consists in doing my work and cutting down all the obstacles of life; I do not know what duty is to another."
"Yes, you are an intellectual. Some men are and many might become intellectuals, but it is not possible for a woman. Those women who have the air of interesting themselves in things of the mind do so only through pretense of imitation. The silver circle of sensation clasps them and sentiment remains sentiment to them. I have been told this and you are right in thinking that I could not have found it out myself; besides, it is a matter of indifference to me, since, like other women, I seek only happiness."
"And you are not happy."
"No, but I can be. I live for that: it is my work, I shall pursue it to my last hour and I am quite tranquil."
"You will give me your secret," said Entragues.
"In a moment," said Sixtine. "If an adventure like the first came to me, it would be myself, not the other, who would die. You have perhaps learned that when any one speaks to me of love, it is not only the peace of my heart which is at stake, but the light of my eyes. This should give me, I believe, the right of choosing: well, I will not choose. Thus, I shall have nothing with which to reproach myself, if I am shipwrecked. I shall have usurped neither the speaking-trumpet nor the helm, I will be the passenger who sleeps in the ship and sails with closed eyes. And to think," she added, as if speaking to herself, "that it needs but eight days for me to be at sea, embarked towards reefs, in a capsizing ship and under an inexperienced command! Isn't that what awaits me? I prefer therefore not to set sail, life is not painful to me; but I shall depart, for some one will lift me from the ground and some one's arms ... whose?... will place me on the cushions amid the rolling waves.... Ah! I am capable of having a very happy voyage, a voyage of real pleasure through oceans full of sunshine with a calm and cool port, and smiles of good souls, for my destination, to the very end...."
"It shall be so," said Entragues.
The tragic simplicity of this woman who vouch-safed to confess herself, affected him as much as a beautiful sunrise or as perfect prose in splendid print. At this moment, he no longer felt any love for her; the impression was wholly literary, and with a remnant of conscience, he cursed himself for this blasphemy. Yet he noticed this: the metaphorical developments with which Sixtine had indicated her conception of the future were analogous to the images which had haunted him one day in a similar state of-mind. A fugitive state, doubtless, but one whose birth, though occasional, revealed secret agreements between their souls. If not the joys of union a great devotion was at least possible, and it is much that two beings be qualified for the same sufferings, and that if life strike one heart the other be wounded. This transitory thought led him back to love: his arms, by a sudden loosened spring, opened and, if she had fallen into them, they would have closed again on the infinite. But he was too late by several minutes: there is a very tiny space between perceived sensation and analyzed sensation: it is there that the ironic "Too Late" dwells.
Sixtine answered: