"Don't talk like that, Christophe. You don't know."
"I pity those who suffer. Not those who cause suffering."
"Well! Do you think she hasn't suffered too? Do you think she has left her child and wrecked her life out of lightness of heart? For her life is wrecked too. I hardly know her, Christophe. I have only seen her a few times, and that only in passing: she never said a friendly word to me, she was not in sympathy with me. And yet I know her better than you. I am sure she is not a bad woman. Poor child! I can guess what she has had to go through...."
"You.... You whose life is so worthy and so right and sensible!..."
"Yes, Christophe, I. You do not know. You are kind, but you are a man and, like all men, you are hard, in spite of your kindness--a man hard and set against everything which is not in and of yourself. You have no real knowledge of the women who live with you. You love them, after your fashion; but you never take the trouble to understand them. You are so easily satisfied with yourselves! You are quite sure that you know us.... Alas! If you knew how we suffer sometimes when we see, not that you do not love us, but how you love us, and that that is all we are to those we love the best! There are moments, Christophe, when we clench our fists so that the nails dig into our hands to keep ourselves from crying to you: 'Oh! Do not love us, do not love us! Anything rather than love us like that!'... Do you know the saying of a poet: 'Even in her home, among her children, surrounded with sham honors, a woman endures a scorn a thousand times harder to bear than the most utter misery'? Think of that, Christophe. They are terrible words."
"What you say has upset me. I don't rightly understand. But I am beginning to see.... Then, you yourself...."
"I have been through all these torments."
"Is it possible?... But, even so, you will never make me believe that you would have done the same as that woman."
"I have no child, Christophe. I do not know what I should have done in her place."
"No. That is impossible. I believe in you. I respect you too much. I swear that you could not."
"Swear nothing! I have been very near doing what she has done.... It hurts me to destroy the good idea you had of me. But you must learn to know us a little if you do not want to be unjust. Yes, I have been within an ace of just such an act of folly. And you yourself had something to do with my not going on with it. It was two years ago. I was going through a period of terrible depression, that seemed to be eating my life away. I kept on telling myself that I was no use in the world, that nobody needed me, that even my husband could do without me, that I had lived for nothing.... I was on the very point of running away, to do Heaven knows what! I went up to your room.... Do you remember?... You did not understand why I came. I came to say good-bye to you.... And then, I don't know what happened, I can't remember exactly ... but I know that something you said ... (though you had no idea of it....) ... was like a flash of light to me.... Perhaps it was not what you said.... Perhaps it was only a matter of opportunity; at that moment the least thing was enough to make or mar me.... When I left you I went back to my own room, locked myself in, and wept the whole day through.... I was better after that: the crisis had passed."