Page:Mauprat (Heinemann).djvu/171

 "Why is life unbearable? Explain yourself, Bernard. Now is our opportunity for an explanation."

"Yes, with a wall between us. I can understand that you are not afraid of me now."

"And yet it seems to me that I am only showing an interest in you; and was I not as affectionate an hour ago when there was no wall between us?"

"I begin to see why you are fearless, Edmée; you always find some means of avoiding people, or of winning them over with pretty words. Ah, they were right when they told me that all women are false, and that I must love none of them."

"And who told you that? Your Uncle John, I suppose, or your Uncle Walter; or was it your grandfather, Tristan?"

"You can jeer—jeer at me as much as you like. It is not my fault that I was brought up by them. There were times, however, when they spoke the truth."

"Bernard, would you like me to tell you why they thought women false?"

"Yes, tell me."

"Because they were brutes and tyrants to creatures weaker than themselves. Whenever one makes one's self feared one runs the risk of being deceived. In your childhood, when John used to beat you, did you never try to escape his brutal punishment by disguising your little faults?"

"I did; that was my only resource."

"You can understand, then, that deception is, if not the right, at least the resource of the oppressed."

"I understand that I love you, and in that at any rate there can be no excuse for your deceiving me."

"And who says that I have deceived you?"