Von Brincken looked long and searchingly at me, and said in a sad and tired voice, which I shall never forget: 

“Yes, you are right....  Evidently you cannot stand my champagne.”

The following morning two letters were brought from his house.  One was for my father, in which Von Brincken said he felt obliged to break off the engagement.  He was suffering from a heart trouble, and a recent medical examination had proved to him that he would be guilty of an unpardonable wrong in marrying a young girl.

To me he wrote: 

“You will understand why I give a fictitious reason to your father and to the world in general.  I should be committing a moral murder were I to marry you under the circumstances.  My love for you, great as it is, is not great enough to conquer the instinctive repugnance of your youth.”

Once again he sent me abroad at his own expense.  This time, at my own wish, I went to Paris, where I met a young artist who fell in love with me.  Had I not, in the saddest way, ruled out of my life everything that might interfere with my ambitious projects, I could have returned his passion.  But he was poor; and about the same time I met Richard.  I cheated myself, and betrayed my first love, which might have saved me, and changed me from an automaton into a living being.

Under the eyes of the man who had stirred my first real emotions, I proceeded to draw Richard on.  My first misfortune taught me wisdom.  This time I had no intention of letting all my plans be shattered.

When I look back on that time, I see that my worst sin was not so much my resolve to sell myself for money, as my aptitude for playing the contemptible comedy of pretended love for days and months and years.  I, who only felt a kind of indifference for Richard, which sometimes deepened into disgust, pretended to be moved by genuine passion.  Yes, I have paid dearly, very dearly, for my golden cage in the Old Market.

Richard is not to blame.  He could not have suspected the truth....

It is so fatally easy for a woman to simulate love.  Every intelligent woman knows by infallible instinct what the man who loves her really wants in return.  The woman of ardent temperament knows how to appear reserved with a lover who is not too emotional; while a cold woman can assume a passionate air when necessary.

I, Joergen, I, who for years cared for no one but myself, have left Richard firmly convinced to this day that I was greedy of his caresses.

You are an honest man, and what I have been telling you will come as a shock.  You will not understand it, or me.

Yet I think that you, too, must have known and possessed women without loving them.  But that is not the same.  If it were, my guilt would be less.

I allowed my senses to be inflamed, while my mind remained cold, and my heart contracted with disgust.  I consciously profaned the sacred words of love by applying them to a man whom I chose for his money.