he said, in a quick, violent tone:

"You think I am brutal? Perhaps I am, but that can matter little now.
After the irreparable wrong I have done you, there is one service--and
only one which I can now render you. I do it now, and tell you the
truth. Understand me clearly; women who fall do not judge themselves
more harshly than their accomplices judge them. For myself, what would
you have me think of you?

"To his misfortune and my shame, I have known your husband since his
boyhood. There is not a drop of blood in his veins that does not throb
for you; there is not a thought of his day nor a dream of his night that
is not yours; your every comfort comes from his sacrifices--your every
joy from his exertion! See what he is to you!

"You have only seen my name in the journals; you have seen me ride by
your window; I have talked a few times with you, and you yield to me in
one moment the whole of his life with your own--the whole of his
happiness with your own.

"I tell you, woman, every man like me, who abuses your vanity and your
weakness and afterward tells you he esteems you--lies! And if after all
you still believe he loves you, you do yourself fresh injury. No: we
soon learn to hate those irksome ties that become duties where we only
sought pleasures; and the first effort after they are formed is to
shatter them.

"As for the rest: women like you are not made for unholy love like ours.
Their charm is their purity, and losing that, they lose everything. But
it is a blessing to them to encounter one wretch, like myself, who cares