I have reached mature years. My heart is fifty years old, my brain is twice that age, and I do not think that the future will give me back my youth. I ought to have loved only one man, traversed all life’s vicissitudes with him, suffered with him and for him and reserved for him the angelic devotion that Christ has taught us. This virtue would then have been able to count on its own reward Old age would have come to heal everything and I would have gone peacefully to my rest alongside the companion of my life, sure that I had done my duty to the end and given him a worthwhile devotion.”

“Why did you not do so? You forgave your first lover so much! When. I knew you, you seemed resolved to go on forgiving the second one, too, endlessly.”

“I lacked patience and faith forsook me, but I yielded to the weakness of human nature, to dejection, and later to the wild hope of finding happiness with another. I was wrong. Men find it impossible to be grateful to us for worshipping those who preceded them. On the contrary, they look upon it as a crime and a reproach and the more devoted we were before we knew them the more they judge us to be incapable of devotion to them.”

“Isn’t that true?”

“It does become true after a number of errors and involvements. The soul is exhausted, the imagination freezes, courage departs, strength forsakes us. That is the stage at which I am. If I told a man now that I am capable of love, I would be lying shamelessly.”

“Ah, you have never been a coquette, my dear friend, and I see that you could never become a cold sensualist”

“Do you pity me then on that account?”

“I pity myself, for in spite of and possibly because of all you say I feel I am desperately in love with you.”

“In that case, my dear Salvator, good night – and you will be leaving to-morrow.”

“Do you wish it? Ah, if you could really wish it”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that then I would stay in spite of you and that I would hope.”

“Do you imagine that I am afraid of you? You used not to be conceited, but now you have become so.”

“No, I haven’t grown conceited, but I do not know why you wish to make me believe that you have become invulnerable. Have you never had any sudden impulses?”

“Never.”

“Ah, I can’t believe it”

“Listen, I have had violent, blind, culpable relationships, I won’t deny it. But they were never an impulse. That is another word for a pleasurable affair which lasts a week … But there can be genuine passions which only last a week.”

“There are even passions which last only an hour,” cried Salvator, with emotion.

“Yes,” she replied, “Illusions so sudden and so powerful that they are followed by aversion and terror as they vanish. The shortest lived passions can be the deepest felt; one mourns them and blushes for them all one’s life.”

“Why blush for them if they are sincere? One can be quite sure that these at least were requited”

“One can’t be more sure of these than of the rest”

“What is spontaneous and irresistible is legitimate and divinely right”

“The right of the stronger is not divinely right,” said Madame Floriani, freeing herself from Salvator’s arms. “My friend, why have you come to insult me, and under my own roof? I can feel no love for you”

“Lucrezia! Lucrezia! You would not kill yourself to-morrow morning, would you?”

“The Lucrezia you speak of was wrong to kill herself Sextus had not possessed her. A man who takes a woman by surprise is not her lover.”

“Ah! You are right, my dear friend,” said Salvator, kneeling at her feet “Will you forgive me?”

“Yes, of course,” she answered, with a smile. “We are alone and it is midnight I have no protector and perhaps I have been too kind to you. What is happening to you is not your fault, but mine. So I will have to abandon the idea of seeing my friends for another ten years. It is sad”

“Oh, my dearest, you are weeping. I have offended you”

“No, not offended My life has not been chaste enough for me to have a right to be offended by a desire expressed plainly.”

“Do not speak in that way. I respect and adore you.”

“That is impossible. You are a man and you are young. That is all.”

“Trample me underfoot, but do not say that I only feel sensuality towards you. My heart is deeply moved, my mind uplifted, and your refusal, far from vexing me, increases my respect and affection even more … Forget that I have distressed you. Heavens, how pale and sad you look! Wretched fool that I am, I have awakened the memory of all your sorrows. Ah, you are weeping, weeping bitterly. You make me wish to kill myself, I despise myself so much.”

“Forgive yourself as I forgive you,” said Madame Floriani gently, as she rose and offered him her hand. “I am wrong to be affected by a chance meeting which I should have foreseen.