"You talk like a child," he answered quietly, "or you don't know what you're saying. If the difference between us were not as wide as heaven and hell, we never could be anything to each other. Only opposite poles attract each other, simply because they seem to repel. Can there be a victory without a conflict? What you are to me, Christiane, I know only too well. What I am or shall be to you--you will soon learn, though you may now thrust the knowledge ever so far away. Or do you know another man," he continued gazing steadily into her face, "who in the hour when you are forsaken by all, when you feel more wretched than you have ever felt before, would come to you and offer you his hand to save you, who could again make desirable the life you would fain throw away as a worthless possession?" A lightning like glance from her gloomy eyes fell upon him. Contrary to his usual custom, he endured it and could not conceal his exultation; his bold shaft had struck the sore spot in her heart. "Who has told you that I am miserable?" she passionately exclaimed. "And if it be true how do you know that I would not a thousand times rather remain unhappy than be rescued by you and your God? If you're right in supposing that all mankind has abandoned me, do you wish to rob me of what is yet left to me, my own individuality, my freedom, my solitude, in which I need answer to no one for my suffering? You've asked me the nature of the feeling that holds me aloof from you. It is this: I've a _horror_ of you! In the first hour of our acquaintance I detected in you the demon to whom nothing is sacred, not even the grief of a poor unhappy woman; who merely to gratify his selfishness, would fain obtain the mastery over everything, and therefore does not even think what others despise or overlook--a creature so destitute of all joys as I--too insignificant to be made useful. But you're mistaken, and neither your heaven nor your hell will help you; this is the last time you'll ever see me, as truly--"