'That's something like a love letter, isn't it?' said Larcher with a kind of savage joy. 'It's more cruel than all the rest to have a woman love you like that because you've beaten her to a jelly. But I'll have no more to do with them--neither with her nor anyone else. I hate love now, and I'm going to cut out my heart. Follow my example.' 'If I could!' replied René, 'but it's impossible. You don't know what that woman was to me.' And again yielding to the passion that raged within him, he wrung his hands and broke into a fit of convulsive sobs. 'You don't know how I loved her, how I believed in her, and what I've given up for her. And then to think of her in the arms of this Desforges--it's horrible!' A shudder of disgust ran through him. 'If she had chosen another man, a man of whom I could think with hatred or rage--but without this feeling of horror! Why, I can't even feel jealous of him. For money! For money!' He rose and caught hold of Claude's arm frantically. 'You told me that he was a director of the Compagnie du Nord. Do you know what she wanted to do the other day? To give me a few good tips in shares. I, too, would have been kept by the Baron. It's only natural, isn't it, that the old man should pay them all--the wife, the husband, and the lover? Oh! if I only could! She is going to the Opera to-night--what if I went there? What if I took her by the hair and spat in her face, before all the people who know her, telling them all that she is a low, filthy harlot?' He fell back into his chair, once more bursting into tears. 'She occupied my thoughts every hour, every moment of the day. You had told me to be on my guard against women, it is true. But then you were beguiled by a Colette, an actress, a creature who had had other lovers before you--whilst she---- Every line in her face swears to me that it is impossible--that I have been dreaming. It is as if I had seen an angel lie. And yet I have the proof, the undeniable proof. Why did I not confront her there in the street, on the threshold of that vile place? I should have strangled her with my hands, like some beast. Claude, my dear fellow, how I wronged you! And the other! I have crushed and trodden under foot the noblest heart that beat in order to get to this monster. It is but just--I have deserved it all. But what can there be in Nature to produce such beings?'