Therese, he had not come for you? You did not know he was in Florence?
He is nothing more to you than a man whom you meet socially? He is not
the one who, when absent, made you say to me, 'I can not?' He is nothing
to you?"

She replied resolutely:

"He comes to my house at times. He was introduced to me by General
Lariviere. I have nothing more to say to you about him. I assure you he
is of no interest to me, and I can not conceive what may be in your mind
about him."

She felt a sort of satisfaction at repudiating the man who had insisted
against her; with so much harshness and violence, upon his rights of
ownership. But she was in haste to get out of her tortuous path. She
rose and looked at her lover, with beautiful, tender, and grave eyes.

"Listen to me: the day when I gave my heart to you, my life was yours
wholly. If a doubt or a suspicion comes to you, question me. The present
is yours, and you know well there is only you, you alone, in it. As for
my past, if you knew what nothingness it was you would be glad. I do not
think another woman made as I was, to love, would have brought to you
a mind newer to love than is mine. That I swear to you. The years that
were spent without you--I did not live! Let us not talk of them. There
is nothing in them of which I should be ashamed. To regret them is
another thing. I regret to have known you so late. Why did you not come
sooner? You could have known me five years ago as easily as to-day. But,
believe me, we should not tire ourselves with speaking of time that has
gone. Remember Lohengrin. If you love me, I am for you like the swan's
knight. I have asked nothing of you. I have wanted to know nothing. I
have not chided you about Mademoiselle Jeanne Tancrede. I saw you loved
me, that you were suffering, and it was enough--because I loved you."

"A woman can not be jealous in the same manner as a man, nor feel what
makes us suffer."

"I do not know that. Why can not she?"

"Why? Because there is not in the blood, in the flesh of a woman that
absurd and generous fury for ownership, that primitive instinct of which
man has made a right. Man is the god who wants his mate to himself.
Since time immemorial woman is accustomed to sharing men's love. It is
the past, the obscure past, that determines our passions. We are already
so old when we are born! Jealousy, for a woman, is only a wound to her
own self-love. For a man it is a torture as profound as moral suffering,
as