Anyway, all of this is beside the point. Keep in mind that we’ve made some progress over nineteen centuries and that steam engines exist. If this imbecile is clever, as is often the case nowadays, he’ll win her over. She’ll lose her exceptionally rare quality. And since it’s from that moment onward that she’ll be successful, she’ll say to herself: He’s right: in fact, it was really easy not to be bored. Maybe she’ll even acquire a taste for the frock coat. There won’t be any more Dartmoor Roads. But, from this point on, she’ll have to make sure she loses her own soul entirely. If she has even the tiniest bit of it left, it won’t take long for her to despise the man she loves. What easy prey this woman must have been! And how easily some man must have made her miserable.

She can hardly be much older than the lad who was watching her with such sparkle in his eyes—the lad whose mouth became, all of a sudden, so beautiful. If I had as much soul as she does, I’d pretend to be a misanthrope. That would be the only way to save myself. With a little modesty, and a well-established reputation for being hard to get along with, I could still go on living. But I’m a man. A woman doesn’t have the same possibilities. She’s obliged, at every turn, to boldly expose all of her weakness, and there’s no way to stop foolish men from wanting to get her in their grip and have a go at her. And sometimes it’s impossible for her to defend herself—impossible even to want to defend herself—because of the fragrance of some hawthorn blossom, or because there’s a warmish wind blowing, or because the gods are capable of wearing anybody down.

He felt like he knew her; that she must have a nature that yielded itself up in advance and held nothing back. This soul, which floated on the surface of a voice, must surely trust in everyone. But did she know that, for the most part, even purity itself is impure? He recalled that he had seen something of her, after all: her delicate hand, which had gestured to the old man to come closer. She wears suede gloves, he said to himself. In a flash, this confirmed for him that this woman had already known suffering. She’s already been very unhappy, he thought. What I was talking about just now—it must have happened. She must be sad, sad most of the time. She must already have experienced that pain of despising the person she loves. In spite of her youth, she can’t have any hope left, except in what she must call her “wildest dreams.” And even her dreams must make her suffer horribly, by reviving what she looks for without hope: what she thought she’d found, once, and what she came to realize was a huge mistake.

Now she has to mistrust herself. She can’t have confidence in her own impulses anymore, and from moment to moment her own judgment must confirm the reasons for this mistrust. Her sadness must constantly make her reckon with what she’s lost: above all, the joy of taking risks. She must consider herself to be inferior. No doubt she’s capable of spending days on end sitting in an armchair, totally absent from where she appears to be. And she’s become so attached to the places where she does go on such occasions, that she guards them with the utmost intensity from everyone else.