There was not the least sign of feeling in the clear soft
tones of her voice. Her steady face and dignified bearing seemed to me
now full of diplomatic reserve and coldness. She had planned this
scene, no doubt, and carefully chosen her words beforehand. Oh, my
friend, there are women who take pleasure in piercing hearts, and
deliberately plunge the dagger back again into the wound; such women
as these cannot but be worshiped, for such women either love or would
fain be loved. A day comes when they make amends for all the pain they
gave us; they repay us for the pangs, the keenness of which they
recognize, in joys a hundred-fold, even as God, they tell us,
recompenses our good works. Does not their perversity spring from the
strength of their feelings? But to be so tortured by a woman, who
slaughters you with indifference! was not the suffering hideous?
"Foedora did not know it, but in that minute she trampled all my hopes
beneath her feet; she maimed my life and she blighted my future with
the cool indifference and unconscious barbarity of an inquisitive
child who plucks its wings from a butterfly.
"'Later on,' resumed Foedora, 'you will learn, I hope, the stability
of the affection that I keep for my friends.
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