One is no more justified in claiming the ownership of a soul than in claiming the ownership of a slave.

According to her, the ties between a man and a woman are sacred only when they are sanctified by love; and she distinguished between love and passion in this epigram: 

Love seeks to give, while passion seeks to take.

At this time, George Sand was in her twenty-seventh year.  She was not beautiful, though there was something about her which attracted observation.  Of middle height, she was fairly slender.  Her eyes were somewhat projecting, and her mouth was almost sullen when in repose.  Her manners were peculiar, combining boldness with timidity.  Her address was almost as familiar as a man’s, so that it was easy to be acquainted with her; yet a certain haughtiness and a touch of aristocratic pride made it plain that she had drawn a line which none must pass without her wish.  When she was deeply stirred, however, she burst forth into an extraordinary vivacity, showing a nature richly endowed and eager to yield its treasures.

The existence which she now led was a curious one.  She still visited her husband at Nohant, so that she might see her son, and sometimes, when M. Dudevant came to town, he called upon her in the apartments which she shared with Jules Sandeau.  He had accepted the situation, and with his crudeness and lack of feeling he seemed to think it, if not natural, at least diverting.  At any rate, so long as he could retain her half-million francs, he was not the man to make trouble about his former wife’s arrangements.

Meanwhile, there began to be perceptible the very slightest rift within the lute of her romance.  Was her love for Sandeau really love, or was it only passion?  In his absence, at any rate, the old obsession still continued.  Here we see, first of all, intense pleasure shading off into a sort of maternal fondness.  She sends Sandeau adoring letters.  She is afraid that his delicate appetite is not properly satisfied.

Yet, again, there are times when she feels that he is irritating and ill.  Those who knew them said that her nature was too passionate and her love was too exacting for him.  One of her letters seems to make this plain.  She writes that she feels uneasy, and even frightfully remorseful, at seeing Sandeau “pine away.”  She knows, she avows, that she is killing him, that her caresses are a poison, and her love a consuming fire.

It is an appalling thought, and Jules will not understand it.  He laughs at it; and when, in the midst of his transports of delight, the idea comes to me and makes my blood run cold, he tells me that here is the death that he would like to die.  At such moments he promises whatever I make him promise.

This letter throws a clear light upon the nature of George Sand’s temperament.  It will be found all through her career, not only that she sought to inspire passion, but that she strove to gratify it after fashions of her own.  One little passage from a description of her written by the younger Dumas will perhaps make this phase of her character more intelligible, without going further than is strictly necessary: