"Helga!"
"Oh, I should have had mercy on your condition, but you would not let me. And now if you wish to hear the truth I will tell you."
"And what is the truth, Helga?"
"The truth is that Oscar does not love you at all--perhaps he has never loved you."
"Helga, how dare you! The falseness of what you say is on the face of it. If Oscar has never loved me, why am I his wife? What advantage had he to gain by choosing me instead of you? What compulsion was put upon him? If he did not love me why did he marry me?"
"He married you out of pity--from a mistaken sense of duty--because he had contracted to marry you and thought it honorable to go on with his bargain. But he loved somebody else and so he sacrificed both of them.
"It's false, Helga, it's false, and it's only your vanity that makes you say so."
"Oh, you must not suppose that I am saying this without a certainty. I had it from himself----"
"Himself? He, himself?"
"----from his own mouth, on the very eve of your marriage."