“You see, I have come.  I thought I ought to come.  I do not think I am altogether innocent of what has happened.  I know:  I have done what was my fate in order that you should be to me what you are now.  My attitude has put thoughts into your head which you would not have had otherwise.”

He looked as if he did not understand.  She continued: 

“I was selfish, I was imprudent.  You were agreeable to me; I liked your wit; I could not get along without you.  I have done what I could to attract you, to retain you.  I was a coquette—­not coldly, nor perfidiously, but a coquette.”

He shook his head, denying that he ever had seen a sign of this.

“Yes, I was a coquette.  Yet it was not my habit.  But I was a coquette with you.  I do not say that you have tried to take advantage of it, as you had the right to do, nor that you are vain about it.  I have not remarked vanity in you.  It may be possible that you had not noticed.  Superior men sometimes lack cleverness.  But I know very well that I was not as I should have been, and I beg your pardon.  That is the reason why I came.  Let us be good friends, since there is yet time.”

He repeated, with sombre softness, that he loved her.  The first hours of that love had been easy and delightful.  He had only desired to see her, and to see her again.  But soon she had troubled him.  The evil had come suddenly and violently one day on the terrace of Fiesole.  And now he had not the courage to suffer and say nothing.  He had not come with a fixed design.  If he spoke of his passion he spoke by force and in spite of himself; in the strong necessity of talking of her to herself, since she was for him the only being in the world.  His life was no longer in himself, it was in her.  She should know it, then, that he was in love with her, not with vague tenderness, but with cruel ardor.  Alas! his imagination was exact and precise.  He saw her continually, and she tortured him.

And then it seemed to him that they might have joys which should make life worth living.  Their existence might be a work of art, beautiful and hidden.  They would think, comprehend, and feel together.  It would be a marvellous world of emotions and ideas.

“We could make of life a delightful garden.”

She feigned to think that the dream was innocent.

“You know very well that I am susceptible to the charm of your mind.  It has become a necessity to see you and hear you.  I have allowed this to be only too plain to you.  Count upon my friendship and do not torment yourself.”  She extended her hand to him.  He did not take it, but replied, brusquely: 

“I do not desire your friendship.  I will not have it.  I must have you entirely or never see you again.  You know that very well.  Why do you extend your hand to me with derisive phrases?  Whether you wished it or not, you have made me desperately in love with you.  You have become my evil, my suffering, my torture, and you ask me to be an agreeable friend.  Now you are coquettish and cruel.  If you can not love me, let me go; I will go, I do not know where, to forget and hate you.  For I have against you a latent feeling of hatred and anger.  Oh, I love you, I love you!”