I fancied for a moment that I might give myself that happiness for six months; you would not have it; you insisted on knowing the means.
Well, good heavens, the means were easy enough to guess! In employing them I was making a greater sacrifice for you than you imagine.

I might have said to you, 'I want twenty thousand francs'; you were in love with me and you would have found them, at the risk of reproaching me for it later on.

I preferred to owe you nothing; you did not understand the scruple, for such it was.

Those of us who are like me, when we have any heart at all, we give a meaning and a development to words and things unknown to other women; I repeat, then, that on the part of Marguerite Gautier the means which she used to pay her debts without asking you for the money necessary for it, was a scruple by which you ought to profit, without saying anything.

If you had only met me to-day, you would be too delighted with what I promised you, and you would not question me as to what I did the day before yesterday.