Page:Plays by Jacinto Benavente - Second series (IA playsbyjacintobe00bena).pdf/131

. Yes, it is true. He was the only person who brought to our Palace the atmosphere of another world, and of truths that were different from ours. His was a different environment. I had no choice when I loved him any more than the prisoner has a choice, whose one desire is to regain his liberty, and who flees by the first avenue which lies open, which leads to freedom and the outer air.

. Instead of leading to freedom, you found, when you followed it, that you had merely changed prisons.

. Wholly to my disadvantage. It was never my privilege to meet a more persistent stickler for etiquette and every known form of propriety than Herr Rosmer. If you are perfectly frank with me—and with yourself—you must confess that your experience has been the same. You were as sadly mistaken as I in imagining that an unequal match was the most effective assertion of your individuality. We should have begun by living our new lives; then love would have come in due season.

. Our experience reminds me of a story which was told me by one of the officers of my regiment, a young man of the most distinguished lineage in Suavia. He fell in love with a girl who lived in the same city, who belonged to the working classes, and to him the charm of their association lay in wandering about the humbler quarters of the city, arm in arm with his girl. They visited the obscurer cafés, they frequented the popular theatres—in a word, he became another person; he escaped from his environment, from the society in which he had always moved, from the obligations of the life which was official. But he soon noticed that the girl was always bored when she was in his company; she looked upon those places with which she had