“But why?”

“But why—­but why, my friend?  There is no why.  People do stupid things just because they do stupid things.  And, besides, you know very well that painters make a specialty of foolish marriages.  They almost always marry models, former sweethearts, in fact, women of doubtful reputation, frequently.  Why do they do this?  Who can say?  One would suppose that constant association with the general run of models would disgust them forever with that class of women.  Not at all.  After having posed them they marry them.  Read that little book, so true, so cruel and so beautiful, by Alphonse Daudet:  ‘Artists’ Wives.’

“In the case of the couple you see over there the accident occurred in a special and terrible manner.  The little woman played a frightful comedy, or, rather, tragedy.  She risked all to win all.  Was she sincere?  Did she love Jean?  Shall we ever know?  Who is able to determine precisely how much is put on and how much is real in the actions of a woman?  They are always sincere in an eternal mobility of impressions.  They are furious, criminal, devoted, admirable and base in obedience to intangible emotions.  They tell lies incessantly without intention, without knowing or understanding why, and in spite of it all are absolutely frank in their feelings and sentiments, which they display by violent, unexpected, incomprehensible, foolish resolutions which overthrow our arguments, our customary poise and all our selfish plans.  The unforeseenness and suddenness of their determinations will always render them undecipherable enigmas as far as we are concerned.  We continually ask ourselves: 

“‘Are they sincere?  Are they pretending?’

“But, my friend, they are sincere and insincere at one and the same time, because it is their nature to be extremists in both and to be neither one nor the other.

“See the methods that even the best of them employ to get what they desire.  They are complex and simple, these methods.  So complex that we can never guess at them beforehand, and so simple that after having been victimized we cannot help being astonished and exclaiming:  ’What!  Did she make a fool of me so easily as that?’

“And they always succeed, old man, especially when it is a question of getting married.

“But this is Sumner’s story: 

“The little woman was a model, of course.  She posed for him.  She was pretty, very stylish-looking, and had a divine figure, it seems.  He fancied that he loved her with his whole soul.  That is another strange thing.  As soon as one likes a woman one sincerely believes that they could not get along without her for the rest of their life.  One knows that one has felt the same way before and that disgust invariably succeeded gratification; that in order to pass one’s existence side by side with another there must be not a brutal, physical passion which soon dies out, but a sympathy of soul, temperament and temper.  One should know how to determine in the enchantment to which one is subjected whether it proceeds from the physical, from a certain sensuous intoxication, or from a deep spiritual charm.