Camille (La Dame aux Camilias)

"Is that really the only reason?"

"If there were any other, I would tell you; for we are not to have any

secrets from one another now."

"Come, Marguerite, I am not going to take a roundabout way of saying

what I really want to say. Honestly, do you care for me a little?"

"A great deal."

"Then why did you deceive me?"

"My friend, if I were the Duchess So and So, if I had two hundred

thousand francs a year, and if I were your mistress and had another

lover, you would have the right to ask me; but I am Mlle. Marguerite

Gautier, I am forty thousand francs in debt, I have not a penny of my

own, and I spend a hundred thousand francs a year. Your question becomes

unnecessary and my answer useless."

"You are right," I said, letting my head sink on her knees; "but I love

you madly."

"Well, my friend, you must either love me a little less or understand me

a little better. Your letter gave me a great deal of pain. If I had

been free, first of all I would not have seen the count the day before

yesterday, or, if I had, I should have come and asked your forgiveness

as you ask me now, and in future I should have had no other lover but

you. I fancied for a moment that I might give myself that happiness for

six months; you would not have it; you insisted on knowing the means.

Well, good heavens, the means were easy enough to guess! In employing

them I was making a greater sacrifice for you than you imagine. I might

have said to you, 'I want twenty thousand francs'; you were in love with

me and you would have found them, at the risk of reproaching me for it

later on. I preferred to owe you nothing; you did not understand the

scruple, for such it was. Those of us who are like me, when we have any

heart at all, we give a meaning and a development to words and things

unknown to other women; I repeat, then, that on the part of Marguerite

Gautier the means which she used to pay her debts without asking you for

the money necessary for it, was a scruple by which you ought to profit,

without saying anything. If you had only met me to-day, you would be too

delighted with what I promised you, and you would not question me as to

what I did the day before yesterday. We are sometimes obliged to buy the

satisfaction of our souls at the expense of our bodies, and we suffer

still more, when, afterward, that satisfaction is denied us."