concubinage with strange men--and that was contrary to my nature,
which has always longed for women! And--I need hardly say this--the
tastes of these strange men were always the reverse of mine. She
developed a real genius for discovering things I detested! That's
what she called 'saving her personality.' Can you understand that?

STRANGER. I can; but I won't attempt to explain it.

TEMPTER. Yet this woman maintained she loved me, and that I didn't
love her. But I loved her so much I didn't want to speak to any
other human being; because I feared to be untrue to her if I found
pleasure in the company of others, even if they were men. I'd
married for feminine society; and in order to enjoy it I'd left my
friends. I'd married in order to find company, but what I got was
complete solitude! And I was supporting house and home, in order to
provide strange men with feminine companionship. _C'est l'amour_,
my friend!

STRANGER. You should never talk about your wife.

TEMPTER. No! For if you speak well of her, people will laugh; and
if you speak ill, all their sympathy will go out to her; and if, in
the first instance, you ask why they laugh, you get no answer.

STRANGER. No. You can never find out who you've married. Never get
hold of her--it seems she's no one. Tell me--what is woman?

TEMPTER. I don't know! Perhaps a larva or a chrysalis, out of whose
trance-like life a man one day will be created. She seems a child,
but isn't one; she is a sort of child, and yet not like one. Drags