He looked as if he did not understand. She continued:

"I was selfish, I was imprudent. You were agreeable to me; I liked your
wit; I could not get along without you. I have done what I could to
attract you, to retain you. I was a coquette--not coldly, nor
perfidiously, but a coquette."

He shook his head, denying that he ever had seen a sign of this.

"Yes, I was a coquette. Yet it was not my habit. But I was a coquette
with you. I do not say that you have tried to take advantage of it, as
you had the right to do, nor that you are vain about it. I have not
remarked vanity in you. It may be possible that you had not noticed.
Superior men sometimes lack cleverness. But I know very well that I was
not as I should have been, and I beg your pardon. That is the reason why
I came. Let us be good friends, since there is yet time."

He repeated, with sombre softness, that he loved her. The first hours of
that love had been easy and delightful. He had only desired to see her,
and to see her again. But soon she had troubled him. The evil had come
suddenly and violently one day on the terrace of Fiesole. And now he had
not the courage to suffer and say nothing. He had not come with a fixed
design. If he spoke of his passion he spoke by force and in spite of
himself; in the strong necessity of talking of her to herself, since she
was for him the only being in the world. His life was no longer in
himself, it was in her. She should know it, then, that he was in love
with her, not with vague tenderness, but with cruel ardor. Alas! his
imagination was exact and precise. He saw her continually, and she
tortured him.