"Inalienable, yes." "I know that after having loved and had a child you refused to be the wife of your child's father. I do not need to know the reasons of your heart. But I do know that in the face of a cowardly society, you dared to demand, not the right to enjoy, but the right to suffer, the right to have a son and bring him up, in your poverty, alone. It was nothing to have demanded this right, but you have exercised it, all by yourself, for thirteen years. And knowing, through my own experience, what these thirteen years mean in suffering and daily effort, I see you before me, intact, straight, proud, without a trace of wear and tear. You have escaped two defeats, that of failure and that of bitterness . . . I myself have not escaped the mark of the latter. . . . I am a connoisseur of the battle of life. I know what the quality of a character like yours is worth. That serious smile, those clear eyes, the calm line of the lids, the loyalty of those hands, that tranquil harmony--and, under it all, the burning fire, the joyous thrill of the struggle, even if one is beaten. (It doesn't seem to matter! One goes on fighting . . .) Do you suppose that a man like myself does not know the value of a woman like you? Or that, knowing it, he should not be ready for anything to win it? . . . Rivière, I want you. I need you. Listen! I am not trying to deceive you. Although I desire your good, I do not want you for your own good, but for my own. I am not offering you any advantages, only more ordeals. . . . You don't know about my life. . . . Sit down here beside me, my beauty of the eyebrows!"