it would not be for
your love.... Your money?... It doesn't count? You're right, it doesn't
count.... I might not have discovered it at once. I might have said, as
I did the other day, that I don't love you. I might also have thought of
my aversion to the idea of marriage. Don't look like that. Marriage as
it is to-day is immoral and stupid. Don't say my marriage was perfect.
The man I lost was a rare soul. For ordinary people like you and me
marriage brings nothing but misfortune and mediocrity.

"To marry is to lie, to deceive both yourself and the other one; and
when a man and a woman harbor infinite hopes, when they look out upon
perpetually changing horizons, when they have the choice of all the
roads in the world, and the whole of life spreads out before them, it is
absurd to suppose that they can ever subject themselves to each other.

"You marry, you pledge your soul, you promise your flesh. Once
imprisoned, you maim yourself, and should the call of love some day
become too strong, what other alternative than to lie or break the
chains? Deceit or catastrophe; there is no choice. Love does not
reconcile the primitive hatred between man and woman: on the contrary,
it sharpens it; and for two people to venture upon the impossible
enterprise of joining together two opposite destinies the full length of
their courses, requires a spirit that neither you nor I possess, a
spirit greater than nature bestows; it also takes the intellect of a
God. I assure you it does....

"Perhaps you would have waited till the very end to bring out your trump
argument. But I would have rejected your seductive words angrily. They
would not be to the point. The point is, that if I were to become your
wife, my lot would be as I have described it.

"You lean forward, you approve what I say.

"The simple fact is, I couldn't live. There would be no use my trying. I
should not have the strength every day to witness a real death unless I
had the tiredness and the sort of forgiveness that come from hard work.
I simply couldn't eat with appetite, I couldn't sleep in peace.

"And in the morning, if I did not know that this exultation, this unruly
vigor, this swarming of scattered inclinations could not be controlled,
dammed and curbed by laws ... no, I would not dare to begin to live
again....

"In a single day there are too many temptations, in a single body too
many feelings; the inner life, remote and _secondary_, must learn
through hum