"Now, now, Leo!" she remonstrated, smiling. "You don't believe half you say. Sitting opposite each other like this it is quite unnecessary to draw the filmiest veil over our souls, or to hide a corner of them from one another. And that does one good, especially when one has had to go through life telling so many lies. Ah! I have so longed for truth. It is a kind of platonic affair, you see, that may be calmly permitted, because it is quite safe to lead to no harm--and this makes me quite happy. At least I need not try to appear better than I am to _you_.... As for you ... you sacrifice yourself for my sake, I know, by sitting like this with me, and you have struggled against it. But you hate me--hate me!" "I? Hate you? Nonsense!" "You can't deny it, my friend. Still, I can put up with it--your great, grand hate, for I know that there is a little drop of friendship mixed with it. We two--ah, my God!--we two really ought to be able to have splendid times together. We have outlived our love, and that is a delightful state of things--when one cares for a man and yet doesn't want to love him." She nestled herself in the cushions as if she were stretching limbs tired from the heat and burden of the day's work, in the well-earned repose of a cool bed. "I might even go so far, my friend, as to say," she continued, moistening the corners of her mouth with her tongue, "that the present relations between you and me are the most desirable that can exist between a man and a woman." He laughed almost against his will. How comical she was in her irresponsible _naïvété_. Perhaps it wasn't right to take her too seriously after all. One must listen to her patiently, as one listened to the chatter of a child and smiled. "I am in earnest," she went on. "Thousands who have studied human nature have said that love is nothing but a sort of war. The woman dislikes the man's desire, yet would dislike still more to forego it. The man is enraged at the woman's resistance, yet can't endure her not to resist and give herself to him without a struggle. How stupid it all is! and how vulgar! Not till it is all over, not till nothing remains but the memory of a few dreamy hours of bliss----" "And repentance," he interrupted gloomily. She gave him a horrified look. "You are cruel," she whispered, twirling a bow of her dress round her forefinger. "I only wish to remind you," he replied, "that all is not as it ought to be between us." "As if I didn't know it!" she sighed. "You talk," he went on, "just as if we were heathens, artists, or Bohemians. That doesn't do. We are made of different material. Our blood may be hot too, it is true. Opportunity may turn us into thieves before we know it, but we have always a skeleton in the cupboard in the shape of our infernal protestant conscience----" "Don't talk of conscience, I entreat you." "And a certain residuum of what is called sense of duty."