Oh, I think I know how to take care of myself!--But suddenly he grew absolutely rigid--as if--as if he had been reflecting. He acted like a man who sleeps with his eyes open. Mamma asked him a question three times, and he never answered a word!
What is your fear compared to what I had to stand! Compared to my biting, nauseous shame as I sat there opposite him?--I scorned the man inwardly, and yet I felt as if I ought to lick the dust on his boots. When mamma said to him, "You don't look very well, Herr Wittich--are you ill?"--her words were like the box on the ear that she gave me when, as a lad of fifteen, I got into mischief with the steward's daughter.--Why did you drag me into this loathsome business? I don't like it!--I won't stand it!--I like to feel straight! I want my hands clean!--I want to look down on the people that I meet!--I owe that to myself.
Reproaches?--I'd like to know who has the guilty conscience in this case, you or I?
How long have you been concerned about your conscience?
Pierre, you know I had never belonged to any other man--except him.
But you've showered sweet glances right and left. You've flirted with every man who would look at you--even the stable-boy wasn't beneath your notice!
And he was better than you!--For he wanted nothing more than to follow me with his eyes. But you, Pierre, you were not so easily satisfied. No, the young Count was more exacting. Corrupt to the core--in spite of his twenty years----
I am not a bit corrupt. I am a dreamer. My twenty years excuse that!
But your dreams are poisonous. You want a woman to be your mistress and yet be chaste--to keep the blush of maidenhood and yet be as passionate as yourself.--And what have you learned from your experience in the world? Nothing, except how to scent and track out the sins that lie hidden in one's inmost soul, the secret sins that one dares not admit to oneself.--And when the prey is in reach, then you fire away with your "rights of the modern woman," your "sovereignty of the freed individuality"--and whatever the rest of the phrases may be.--Ah! You knew better than I that we all have the Scarlet Woman's blood in our veins!--Blow away the halo--and the saint is gone!
It seems to me you found a great deal of pleasure in your sin!