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 is the good of deceiving oneself? I know how it will be as soon as she is his. Of course she denies it now; she says that never, never can anything come between us. She believes for certain that she speaks the truth. But she is young, and she does not hate him. She will never deny him his rights as her husband, and the man to whom a woman gives herself must indeed be a poor creature if he cannot soon set the fire alight. After that everything will come smoothly enough. Once she is happy in his arms, she will soon hand over to him her whole individuality, her gratitude, her trustfulness, her confidence. They will sit together in the twilight, she on his knee; he will ask her about me and she will betray me: because when a woman is sitting thus lovingly on a man's knee, she will never admit that she has loved another man still more passionately. She will tell him all the bad and hateful things about me he wants to hear. His kisses will tempt her to talk, and if he doesn't seem quite contented, she will entertain him with heaps of lies.

In fancy I pass out into the street, and see the lights in their rooms. I can follow them from hour to hour; I know that now they are dining, that now she is sitting on his knee in the drawing-room, that now at last the lights are blown out … that now she is standing in front of the mirror with her naked arms around his neck.

And this is really to happen? She is to be his? He, who has no right in her, except what I have