I have suffered, yes, I have suffered!... I deserved it but too well, after what I said, after what I did!... But that is not what matters or overwhelms me.... I would willingly die, if you could but see once more, were it only for the flash of an eye, that which you once loved.... I cling to myself, to the little that remains of me.... I should like to hide myself, to bury my distress; and yet I want you to see me first, so that you may know at last what you would have to love, if you still loved me.... Come, come, nearer, nearer.... Not nearer to me, but nearer to the rays that shine upon my wretchedness.... Look at these wrinkles, these dead eyes, these lips.... No, no, do not approach, lest disgust.... I am less like myself than if I had returned from a world which life had never visited.... You do not recoil? You are not astonished?... You do not see me as these mirrors see me?... JOYZELLE. I see that you are pale and that you seem tired.... Do not put away my arms.... Bring your face closer.... Why not let me put my lips to it, as I did when all things smiled to us in the garden of flowers?... Love knows many days on which nothing smiles.... What matter, if it be there to smile when we weep?... I am pushing back your hair which hid your face and made it look so sad.... See, it is just like that which I pushed back in our first kiss.... Come, come, do not think about the lies of the mirrors.... They do not know what they say; but love knows.... Already life is returning to those eyes which see me again.... Have no fear, for I have none.... I know what we must do and I shall have the secret that will cure your pain.... LANCÉOR. Joyzelle!... JOYZELLE. Yes, yes, come nearer; I love you more dearly than at the happy moment when all united us.... LANCÉOR. Ah, I understand that; but the other, the other thing!... JOYZELLE. What thing? LANCÉOR. I understand that one can find one's love in ruins, that one can gather up its remnants and loves them still.... But where are the remnants of our love? Nothing is left of it; for, before fate struck me as you see, I had crushed out of existence all that it could not destroy.... I have lied and deceived; and, at the very moment when the least lie begins again in a sphere where nothing is wiped out, a fault which love might have pardoned.... Truth is dead in our one heart.... I have lost the confidence in which all my thoughts surrounded your thoughts, even as a transparent water surrounds a still clearer water.... I myself no longer believe in it, I no longer believe in myself; I have nothing pure left into which you can bend to find my shadow; and my soul is even sadder than my body.... JOYZELLE. Did you kiss that woman?... LANCÉOR. Yes. JOYZELLE. Did she call you?... LANCÉOR. No. JOYZELLE. And why did you say that I was mistaken?... LANCÉOR.