“I must confess to you,” she began, “that all I have made you think of me is untrue—a mask of mine, a mannerism, an empty theory. All women are at their heart’s core exactly alike; during all their life they follow one thing alone, and perish in pursuit of it.”
“You mean love?” I questioned, trying clumsily to feign indifference.
“Yes. That is the one thing. It is our fate; if not the first thing that we pursue, it is always the last that we give up. There is no help for it—none. We may be all our life forcing upon ourselves the conviction that we have the same rights as men, and are capable of bearing the same amount of liberty as they; but there must come a moment when, for that one true love, we most willingly give up all its counterfeits.”
“But you have, Madame, the comfort to know that men too are liable to a similar reaction. When quite sated with freedom, the very greatest profligates will settle down to a married life.”
“Only for a short while, and then they begin all over again, and return to their favourite pastime.... Why, take Imszanski, for instance; you surely know him well....”
My face flushed up as red as fire, but I undauntedly raised my eyes to hers. She, on encountering my gaze, blushed, too. Once more I felt an uneasy flutter at my heart.
She burst into a sudden transport.
“I love, I love, and without any return!—Oh, how unlike me, is it not?”
Whereupon she laughed hysterically, and then shed tears, tearing at her handkerchief with her teeth. She was waiting for me to put her some questions, that she might be able to confide her sorrows to me. I thought I should soon be likely to go mad.
At last Gina came in. She took me to Idalia, a fairly well-known pianist, who returned here from Paris a year since.