CAROLINE. Ah, Julie dear, you complain of not being loved as you wish to be. What can _I_ say to that, I whom no man will ever take in his arms? I who feel myself a thing apart, useless, absurd, incomplete. You don’t know what a void that means for a woman: to have no one to forgive, no one to devote herself to. And the world sneers at women for remaining single. It makes their loneliness a reproach. Look at me, hardly allowed to dispose of my own property, black looks all round me because I have dared to use my own money in my own way. JULIE. Poor Caroline. CAROLINE. Yes. You may well pity me. And if I told you all. I turned to religion for consolation. For a while it cheated my craving for love; but it couldn’t give me peace, and it has only left me more bitter and more disillusioned. For months I buoyed myself up on one last hope. I was a fool. [_Weeping_] Ah, no one need tell me how absurd it was. I know it well enough. I, at my age and in these clothes, much like everyone else’s clothes, only everything looks ridiculous on me. _I_ to fall in love! I must be crazy. Don’t laugh at me. I have suffered so much. I knew he couldn’t love me, but I hoped he would be grateful for what I—I only wanted his gratitude and his pity, no more, I swear to you. And now it seems there is some other woman. [_A pause_]. Oh, what good was it to guard my good name as a miser guards his gold if this is all? No, Julie; don’t spoil your life a second time. If you cannot resign yourself to living with your husband, at least don’t follow my example. Don’t try to live my life. One of us is enough. Don’t try to earn your bread. It is too hard, and men have made it too humiliating. JULIE. But, Caroline, if people see me accepting hardship with courage, living alone deliberately, because I choose, surely the dignity of my life will make them respect me? CAROLINE. No one will believe in the dignity of your life. JULIE. Then it is monstrous! That is all I can say. Monstrous! And since to pay for bread to eat and clothes to wear and a roof to cover me I must either give myself to a husband I hate or to a lover whom, perhaps, I may love, I choose the lover. If I must sell myself to someone, I prefer to choose the buyer. ANGÈLE. You are mad! Mad! Be reconciled to your husband. That is the best thing you can do. JULIE. So everybody says. Well, I tell you I will not. I will not. ANGÈLE. You would soon be glad enough to have your married life back again, bad as it may be; or even Caroline’s poverty. JULIE [_scornfully_] You think so. ANGÈLE [_passionately_] You don’t know what you are saying. You don’t understand, Julie. You to talk like that! You to wish—Oh, you don’t understand. JULIE. You did it yourself. ANGÈLE [_with great emotion_] Yes. I did it. But I would strangle myself rather than begin it again. Julie, I entreat you. What am I to say? How am I to stop you? I can’t tell you and Caroline all the shame I have endured. Oh, don’t make me do that.