rself like a malefactor;
instead of coming to my home last night with that threatening face;
instead of approaching me this morning with the solemnity of a judge, why
did you not question me simply, frankly, as one who knows that I have
loved him very, very much?.... Having been lovers, is that a reason for
detesting each other when we cease those relations?"

"'When we cease those relations!'" replied Gorka. "So you no longer love
me? Ah, I knew it; I guessed it after the first week of that fatal
absence! But to think that you should tell it to me some day like that,
in that calm voice which is a horrible blasphemy for our entire past. No,
I do not believe it. I do not yet believe it. Ah, it is too infamous."

"Why?" interrupted the Countess, raising her head with still more
haughtiness.... "There is only one thing infamous in love, and that is a
falsehood. Ah, I know it. You men are not accustomed to meeting true
women, who have the respect, the religion of their sentiment. I have that
respect; I practise that religion. I repeat that I loved you a great
deal, Boleslas. I did not hide it from you formerly. I was as loyal to
you as truth itself. I have the consciousness of being so still, in
offering you, as I do, a firm friendship, the friendship of man for man,
who only asks to prove to you the sincerity of his devotion."

"I, a friendship with you, I--I--I?" exclaimed Boleslas. "Have I had
enough patience in listening to you as I have listened? I heard you lie
to me and scented the lie in the same breath. Why do you not ask me as
well to form a friendship for him with whom you have replaced me? Ah, so
you think I am blind, and you fancy I did not see that Maitland near you,
and that I did not know at the first glance what part he was playing in
your life? You did not think I might have good reasons for returning as I
did? You did not know that one does not dally with one whom one loves as
I love you?.... It is not true.... You have not been loyal to me, since
you took this man for a lover while you were still my mistress. You had
not the right, no, no, no, you had not the right!.... And what a man!....
If it had been Ardea, Dorsenne, no matter whom, that I might not blush
for you.... But that brute, that idiot, who has nothing in his favor,
neither good looks, birth, elegance, mind nor talent, for he has none--he
has nothing but his neck and shoulders of a bull.... It is as if you had
deceived me with a lackey.... N