But she had her answer ready for him: "No one can keep on loving forever; all that one can do is to be constant. Do you believe that that exalted delirium of the senses can last for years? No, no. As for the most of those women who are addicted to passions, to violent caprices of greater or less duration, they simply transform life into a novel. Their heroes are different, the events and circumstances are unforeseen and constantly changing, the _dénouement_ varies. I admit that for them it is amusing and diverting, for with every change they have a new set of emotions, but for _him_--when it is ended, that is the last of it. Do you understand me?" "Yes; what you say has some truth in it. But I do not see what you are getting at." "It is this: there is no passion that endures a very long time; by that I mean a burning, torturing passion like that from which you are suffering now. It is a crisis that I have made hard, very hard for you to bear--I know it, and I feel it--by--by the aridity of my tenderness and the paralysis of my emotional nature. This crisis will pass away, however, for it cannot last forever." "And then?" he asked with anxiety. "Then I think that to a woman who is as reasonable and calm as I am you can make yourself a lover who will be pleasing in every way, for you have a great deal of tact. On the other hand you would make a terrible husband. But there is no such thing as a good husband, there never can be." He was surprised and a little offended. "Why," he asked, "do you wish to keep a lover that you do not love?" She answered, impetuously: "I do love him, my friend, after my fashion. I do not love ardently, but I love." "You require above everything else to be loved and to have your lovers make a show of their love." "It is true. That is what I like. But beyond that my heart requires a companion apart from the others. My vainglorious passion for public homage does not interfere with my capacity for being faithful and devoted; it does not destroy my belief that I have something of myself that I could bestow upon a lover that no other man should have: my loyal affection, the sincere attachment of my heart, the entire and secret trustfulness of my soul; in exchange for which I should receive from him, together with all the tenderness of a lover, the sensation, so sweet and so rare, of not being entirely alone upon the earth. That is not love from the way you look at it, but it is not entirely valueless, either." He bent over toward her, trembling with emotion, and stammered: "Will you let me be that man?"