‘I see now; I have to-night added one more mistake to the many others of which my life has been composed. Seeing the groove I am now in, fast and immovable, I should have continued to travel in it without making a sign or a struggle. I wished to speak to you, because I--valued your opinion. There are things which may not and cannot be explained. I cannot explain openly to you why I wish you to go. If I go away now without further explanation, you set me down in your own mind as an imbecile, and justly so. I must say something. With your fine brilliant intelligence you will understand me more or less. Hitherto you have seen merely my degradation, my humiliation. That was bad enough, but now that we have had an explanation I could endure it. But from now, or from very soon after this day, you will be witness of my shame--of the irremediably wretched and degrading life to which I am bound in punishment of my own folly and weakness--a life which I must go on leading, which I can neither improve nor terminate, for reasons which it is utterly impossible to me to explain to you. You have seen me, a drudge, at my drudgery. Within a week--nay, it may be in a day or two--the drudge’s owner will return. My slavery will again be complete. My cup will have added to its bitterness the intolerable flavour of knowing that you are there looking on. You have pitied me hitherto; now I foresee that you will despise me. That I have deserved contempt, though I am now expiating my sin in dust and ashes, does not make it better. And,’ he started up from his chair and twisted his fingers into and out of each other, ‘I cannot live in your contempt; I cannot bear it; I ask you to go.’ Minna sat as if rooted to her chair. She felt a surging in her ears, and things were indistinct for a moment or two before her eyes. Partially, if not completely, she comprehended the situation, and understood that for him it was an agonizing one. Of his relations to Signora Dietrich she had no manner of doubt in her own mind. She was no child; she knew a good deal of the world, and had a considerable tolerance for many human weaknesses. She had no difficulty in understanding that the bond which kept Giuseppe tied at his present post must be a strong one. As to its nature, on one side, at any rate, she was quite certain in her own mind. That her presence and society had roused in him feelings of interest and admiration long dormant, there could be also no manner of doubt, and those reawakened feelings had caused him to feel more poignantly than ever the misery of the position to which circumstances or his own weakness in time past had reduced him.