PELTIER
I'll come with you.
AUBIN (to his wife, aloud, taking her hand which he kisses)
You, Marie, await me here--dead or alive. Do you understand me, my
pretty?
(Aubin and Peltier leave)
MARIE
What an affair! Am I really dreaming in the end. (throwing herself on
a sofa which might soon have become dangerous) A little order in my
thoughts. (pressing her fingers to her forehead) There. There.--Yes,
what I was telling Mr. Peltier is still true. I was a spoiled child
when Aubin took me. He spoiled me, too. I became accustomed to
prolonging my childhood and my youth in the married state. I was
willful, demanding, capricious. At the beginning my husband found this
charming, then he tired of it. Quarrels, harshness on his part, on
mine sulks. Seven years later Peltier appeared. A charming man,
surely. But less so than Aubin, now that I see things clearly. And at
bottom, this stupid departure is still more my fault than his. A
moment of feminine scorn which with our mores a man is praised for
profiting from. I couldn't hold it against him just now for wanting
what was implied by our innocent prank and a little fortitude helped
me confine it to its character of folly and nothing more. But what?
While I tell myself these things, two likable men who both love me,
and of which I decidedly prefer one, my husband, are fighting over me.
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