We are incidents to them--no matter how they say they love us.

They _can't_ love as we do.
They're not made for it! We are part of the game to them; they are the whole game to us; we are, at best, an important episode in their careers; they are our whole careers.

Oh, Valerie! Valerie! listen to me, child! That man could go on living and painting and eating and drinking and sleeping and getting up to dress and going to bed to sleep, if you lay dead in your grave.

But if you loved him, and were his wife--or God forgive me!--his mistress, the day he died _you_ would die, though your body might live on.

I know--_I_ know, Valerie.