"I love you more than everything else in the world."
"Naturally! You couldn't do less. But I am not asking you how much, I am asking you how you love me. . . . Yes, I know that you want me; but what is it, precisely, that you want to make of your Annette?"
"Make her half of myself."
"There you are! . . . Now the point is, my friend, that I am not a half. I am a whole Annette."
"That's just a way of speaking. I mean that you are me, and that I am you."
"No, no, don't be me, Roger! Let me be that!"
"When we unite our lives, won't we make them one?"
"That's what worries me. I am afraid I can't quite do that."
"What's troubling you, Annette? What are these ideas? You love me, don't you? You love me? That's the essential thing! Don't bother about the rest. The rest is my business. You'll see, I shall arrange—I, and my family that will be yours—we shall arrange your life so well that you will have nothing to do but let yourself be carried along."
Annette was looking at the ground and tracing letters in the dirt with her toe. She was smiling.