"'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