to say to me, and it all amounts to this: you love me. It's quite clear,
and I answer you just as clearly: I do _not_ love you.

NERISSE. I'm so unhappy!

THERESE. If it's true that you're unhappy because I don't love you, that
is a misfortune for you; a misfortune for which I am not in any way
responsible, because you certainly cannot accuse me of having encouraged
you.

NERISSE. I don't ask you to love me--yet. I ask you to allow me to try
and win your love.

THERESE [_almost desperate_] Don't dare to say that again. If you were
an honorable man, you couldn't possibly have said these things to me
to-day when my living depends upon you. You know the position I'm in,
and you know that if I don't stay here, there are only two courses open
to me--to go and live at the expense of my godmother, which I will _not_
do, or to take the chances of a woman alone looking for work in Paris.
Don't you understand that speaking about your love for me to-day is the
same as driving me into the street?

NERISSE. If you go into the street, it is by your own choice.

THERESE. Exactly. There's the old, everlasting, scandalous bargain. Sell
yourself or you shall starve. If I give in, I can stay; if I don't--

NERISSE. _I_ didn't say so. But clearly my efforts to help you will be
greater if I know that I'm working for my friend.

THERESE. You actually confess it! You think yourself an honorable man,
and you don't see that what you're doing is the vilest of crimes.

NERISSE. Now I ask you. Did I wait for your answer before I began to
defend you and to help you?

THERESE. No, but you believe I shall give in through gratitude or fear.
Well, don't count upon it. Even if I have to kill myself in the end, I
shall never sell myself, either to you or to anyone else. [_In despair_]
Then that's what it comes to. Wherever we want to make our way, to have
the right to work and to live, we find the door barred by a man who
says, Give yourself or starve. Because one's on one's own, because they
know that there's not another man to start up and defend his _property_!
It's almost impossible to believe human beings can be so vile to one
another. For food! Just for food! Because they know we shall starve if
we don't give in. Because we have old people, or children at home who
are waiting for us to bring them food, men put this vile condition to
us, to do like the girls in the streets. It's shameful, shameful,
shameful. It's enough to make one shri