GILBERT. My dear child, in the old days I had a soul too to offer you. MARGARET. Oh, at times, only this ... GILBERT. Don't try now to depreciate our relation--you won't succeed. It will remain always your most splendid experience. MARGARET. Bah ... when I think that I tolerated that rubbish for a whole year! GILBERT. Tolerated? You were entranced with it. Don't be ungrateful-- I'm not. Miserably as you behaved at the last, for me it can't poison my memories. And anyhow, that was part of the whole. MARGARET. You don't mean it! GILBERT. Yes ... And now listen to this one statement I owe to you: at the very time when you were beginning to turn away from me, when you felt this drawing toward the stable--_la nostalgie de l'ecurie_--I was realizing that at heart I was done with you. MARGARET. No ...! GILBERT. It's quite characteristic, Margaret, that you hadn't the least perception of it. Yes, I was done with you. I simply didn't need you any more. What you could give me, you had given me; you had fulfilled your function. You knew in the depths of your heart, you knew unconsciously ... that your day was over. Our relation had achieved its purpose; I do not regret having loved you. MARGARET. _I_ do! GILBERT. That's splendid! In that one small observation lies, for the connoisseur, the whole deep distinction between the true artist and the dilettante. To you, Margaret, our relation is today nothing more than the recollection of a few mad nights, a few deep talks of an evening in the alleys of the English Garden; I have made of it a work of art. MARGARET. So have I. GILBERT. How so? What do you mean? MARGARET. What you've succeeded in doing, if you please, I've succeeded in doing too. I also have written a novel in which our former relations play a part, in which our former love--or what we called by that name--is preserved to eternity. GILBERT. If I were in your place, I wouldn't say anything about eternity until the second edition was out. MARGARET. Well, anyhow, it means something different when _I_ write a novel from what it does when you write one. GILBERT. Yes ...? MARGARET. You see, you're a free man--you haven't got to steal the hours in which you can be an artist; and you don't risk your whole future. GILBERT. Oh ... do you? MARGARET. I have! Half an hour ago Clement left me because I owned up to him that I had written a novel. GILBERT. Left you? For ever? MARGARET. I don't know. It is possible. He went away in anger. He is unaccountable--I can't tell beforehand what he will decide about me. GILBERT. Ah ... so he forbids you to write! He won't allow the girl he loves to make any use of her brains--oh, that's splendid! That's the fine flower of the nation! Ah ... yes. And you--aren't you ashamed to experience the same sensations in the arms of such an idiot that you once ... MARGARET. I forbid you to talk like that about him! You don't understand him. GILBERT. Ha ...!