The struggle then was over. The drama of passion and perfidy at which I had assisted for the last few weeks had reached its logical conclusion. My dream had lied to me. It was too late to prevent that adorable child, born with the most rare and delicate romance in her heart and head, becoming nothing more than a courtesan. Her pride itself, that pretty, vibrating pride for which I had loved her so, would hate her degradation. When she emerged from the furious crisis which had sent her to the bed of a man like Tournade, the contempt she would feel for herself would vilify her so in her own eyes and her inner nausea would have two results equally frightful to imagine: either she would not bear her life a day longer and kill herself, or else she would take a sorrowing pride in incarnating in herself that outrageous type of luxury and triumphant shamelessness which become a great actress who is also a great courtesan. Which of these two solutions should a man prefer who loved her as I did, first of all with a somewhat obscure sentiment, but now with one which was very full of misery and suffering? Both perspectives seemed so horrible to me that in spite of the promise I had given the old servant I made a fixed resolution never to see the unhappy child again, and a wiser one still of putting into execution a plan I had long pondered over, ever since, in fact, I had begun to understand my poor heart: to go away, and return either to Spain or Italy, to one of those sunny lands where a soul wounded to death can at least wrap up its wound in solitude, light and beauty.