You will always find that
I have devotion and kindness for them. I would give my life to serve
my friends; but you could only despise me, if I allowed them to make
love to me without return. That is enough. You are the only man to
whom I have spoken such words as these last.'
"At first I could not speak, or master the tempest that arose within
me; but I soon repressed my emotions in the depths of my soul, and
began to smile.
"'If I own that I love you,' I said, 'you will banish me at once; if
I plead guilty to indifference, you will make me suffer for it. Women,
magistrates, and priests never quite lay the gown aside. Silence is
non-committal; be pleased then, madame, to approve my silence. You
must have feared, in some degree, to lose me, or I should not have
received this friendly admonition; and with that thought my pride
ought to be satisfied. Let us banish all personal considerations. You
are perhaps the only woman with whom I could discuss rationally a
resolution so contrary to the laws of nature. Considered with regard
to your species, you are a prodigy. Now let us investigate, in good
faith, the causes of this psychological anomaly. Does there exist in
you, as in many women, a certain pride in self, a love of your own
loveliness, a refinement of egoism which makes you shudder at the idea
of belonging to another; is it the thought of resigning your own will
and submitting to a superiority, though only of convention, which
displeases you? You would seem to me a thousand times fairer for it.
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