“I love her,” he murmured in a tone in which he might have said “I am going to die.”  Then suddenly he continued: 

“Ah!  For three years we lived in a state of terror and delight.  I almost killed her five or six times.  She tried to pierce my eyes with that hairpin that you saw just now.  Look, do you see that little white spot beneath my left eye?  We loved each other.  How can I explain that infatuation?  You would not understand it.”

“There must be a simple form of love, the result of the mutual impulse of two hearts and two souls.  But there is also assuredly an atrocious form, that tortures one cruelly, the result of the occult blending of two unlike personalities who detest each other at the same time that they adore one another.”

“In three years this woman had ruined me.  I had four million francs which she squandered in her calm manner, quietly, eat them up with a gentle smile that seemed to fall from her eyes on to her lips.”

“You know her?  There is something irresistible about her.  What is it?  I do not know.  Is it those gray eyes whose glance penetrates you like a gimlet and remains there like the point of an arrow?  It is more likely the gentle, indifferent and fascinating smile that she wears like a mask.  Her slow grace pervades you little by little; exhales from her like a perfume, from her slim figure that scarcely sways as she passes you, for she seems to glide rather than walk; from her pretty voice with its slight drawl that would seem to be the music of her smile; from her gestures, also, which are never exaggerated, but always appropriate, and intoxicate your vision with their harmony.  For three years she was the only being that existed for me on the earth!  How I suffered; for she deceived me as she deceived everyone!  Why?  For no reason; just for the pleasure of deceiving.  And when I found it out, when I treated her as a common girl and a beggar, she said quietly:  ‘Are we married?’

“Since I have been here I have thought so much about her that at last I understand her.  She is Manon Lescaut come back to life.  It is Manon, who could not love without deceiving; Marion for whom love, amusement, money, are all one.”

He was silent.  After a few minutes he resumed: 

“When I had spent my last sou on her she said simply: 

“’You understand, my dear boy, that I cannot live on air and weather.  I love you very much, better than anyone, but I must live.  Poverty and I could not keep house together.”

“And if I should tell you what a horrible life I led with her!  When I looked at her I would just as soon have killed her as kissed her.  When I looked at her . . .  I felt a furious desire to open my arms to embrace and strangle her.  She had, back of her eyes, something false and intangible that made me execrate her; and that was, perhaps, the reason I loved her so well.  The eternal feminine, the odious and seductive feminine, was stronger in her than in any other woman.  She was full of it, overcharged, as with a venomous and intoxicating fluid.  She was a woman to a greater extent than any one has ever been.”