“Why?” interrupted the Countess, raising her head with still more haughtiness....  “There is only one thing infamous in love, and that is a falsehood.  Ah, I know it.  You men are not accustomed to meeting true women, who have the respect, the religion of their sentiment.  I have that respect; I practise that religion.  I repeat that I loved you a great deal, Boleslas.  I did not hide it from you formerly.  I was as loyal to you as truth itself.  I have the consciousness of being so still, in offering you, as I do, a firm friendship, the friendship of man for man, who only asks to prove to you the sincerity of his devotion.”

“I, a friendship with you, I—­I—­I?” exclaimed Boleslas.  “Have I had enough patience in listening to you as I have listened?  I heard you lie to me and scented the lie in the same breath.  Why do you not ask me as well to form a friendship for him with whom you have replaced me?  Ah, so you think I am blind, and you fancy I did not see that Maitland near you, and that I did not know at the first glance what part he was playing in your life?  You did not think I might have good reasons for returning as I did?  You did not know that one does not dally with one whom one loves as I love you?....  It is not true....  You have not been loyal to me, since you took this man for a lover while you were still my mistress.  You had not the right, no, no, no, you had not the right!....  And what a man!....  If it had been Ardea, Dorsenne, no matter whom, that I might not blush for you....  But that brute, that idiot, who has nothing in his favor, neither good looks, birth, elegance, mind nor talent, for he has none—­he has nothing but his neck and shoulders of a bull....  It is as if you had deceived me with a lackey....  No..... it is too terrible....  Ah, Catherine, swear to me that it is not true.  Tell me that you no longer love me, I will submit, I will go away, I will accept all, provided that you swear to me you do not love that man—­swear, swear!"... he added, grasping her hands with such violence that she uttered a slight exclamation, and, disengaging herself, said to him: 

“Cease; you pain me.  You are mad, Gorka; that can be your sole excuse....  I have nothing to swear to you.  What I feel, what I think, what I do no longer concerns you after what I have told you....  Believe what it pleases you to believe....  But,” and the irritation of an enamored woman, wounded in the man she adores, possessed her, “you shall not speak twice of one of my friends as you have just spoken.  You have deeply offended me, and I will not pardon you.  In place of the friendship I offered you so honestly, we will have no further connections excepting those of society.  That is what you desired....  Try not to render them impossible to yourself.  Be correct at least in form.  Remember you have a wife, I have a daughter, and that we owe it to them to spare them the knowledge of this unhappy rupture....  God is my witness, I wished to have it otherwise.”