‘I laugh now. I laughed then, too. I could not help it. It was all so--funny, in a way. I had intended to answer him, to pour out upon him the whole torrent of my wrongs and my sufferings and my martyrdom; but as soon as he had spoken those words, and I saw that he really meant and believed them all, I knew it would be utterly useless. It would only waste time, and wear out my energies, so I said nothing of all that. I resolved that he should think me as bad as possible, that he should have every ground for appealing to the world and the law, when I had gone, and saying, “See how she has betrayed me! Set me free from her at once.” So I gathered myself together, and said, ‘“You are perfectly right. I do hate you. I loathe you, and I wish with all my heart that you were dead. Then I should have a chance of being happy before I have grown too old and too warped and too ill-tempered to be capable of feeling what happiness is.” ‘“Happiness--oh!” said he: “which of them is it, pray, whose sighs you wish to reward? That painter-fellow, with the sentimental eyes, or the Englishman with the starched cravat--your dear friend’s brother? It’s a race between them, as I have seen for some time, and I only am in the way.” ‘I did not understand him altogether. I suppose it was just an additional insult thrown in. He wished to drag in Minna’s name because I love her, and say something offensive about her or about someone who belonged to her. I do not know whether I turned red or pale with anger. I felt a hot glow all over me, like a breath of air from a furnace. “I could be happier with a ploughboy, who was honest, than with you,” I said, “if one must have someone to be happy with. I don’t know why one should not be happy alone, feeling free and decent, and able to respect one’s self again, mind and body.” ‘“You will never be happy, then, either with or without someone,” was his answer. “Never, while I am here. I am not dead yet, and I’m not going to die, whatever you may think; and as long as I live here, you are my wife--and here you have to stay. You can do nothing to help yourself--nothing at all.” ‘Two thoughts came into my mind at the same moment, I think. First, that I had so behaved that this creature trusted me; despite all he had done to crush every good feeling in me, he had not been able to crush out my truth and my honesty. While he accused me in one breath of wishing him dead and of being in a plot to bring about his death, in the next he told me I could never be free while he lived, because he took it for granted that I should never desert him. That was one thought, and the next was, as my eyes fell upon a table on which stood some drugs, that in one moment I could put him out of the way, still his horrible voice, kill his abominable power for ever.