“You were really in love with the costume, and awfully docile.”
“You have taught me what love is. Your serene form of worship let me forget two thousand years.”
“And my faithfulness to you was without equal!”
“Well, as far as faithfulness goes—”
“Ungrateful!”
“I will not reproach you with anything. You are a divine woman, but nevertheless a woman, and like every woman cruel in love.”
“What you call cruel,” the goddess of love replied eagerly, “is simply the element of passion and of natural love, which is woman’s nature and makes her give herself where she loves, and makes her love everything, that pleases her.”
“Can there be any greater cruelty for a lover than the unfaithfulness of the woman he loves?”
“Indeed!” she replied. “We are faithful as long as we love, but you demand faithfulness of a woman without love, and the giving of herself without enjoyment. Who is cruel there—woman or man? You of the North in general take love too soberly and seriously. You talk of duties where there should be only a question of pleasure.”
“That is why our emotions are honorable and virtuous, and our relations permanent.”