angered you today?
Is it a jealousy whose disquiet you pretend not to see? Did they — I know them — tell you he was in the company of one of the girls?... Truly strange, your case... that is an eclipse that will not defy you! What are you saying?... Or perhaps you felt that he sets an ordinary value on you, while you — I know you — insist on being, unlike the rest, a person... who holds the gaze a long while!!
Put all this away from you, you selfish thing... Have I not told you time and again... that what lasts may be crystallized by what passes and goes? Where is your listening?
Tame the contrariness of your soul... tame it... What? Do I read in your eyes something other than what I have said?... Did he fling at you questions more awkward than any answer? I know the weight of those questions... but... where were you while he was gathering up your consenting laughter and your compliant words? And your pride? I forgot to ask you how his affairs are faring now? Listen to me! It is a swelling vanity, and it will not protect you!! Did he take you by surprise... with an invitation you did not want, and you were stunned? Astonishment of that kind... my friend... is the reflex of a child watched over by your dozing intuition!
Do not be unjust to your So-and-so — do not!... Beware of calling him selfish, brazen, encroaching... so long as selfishness is everyone's property...
Your own selfishness has its cries and its impulses and its other audacities... And then do not forget the tale of cowardice among us — you know how certain time-honored conventions have immortalized it!
Only yesterday you were wishing he would deign to ask a favor of you... and I would laugh... hearing you weigh and reckon... your good-natured indulgence leading you into appraisals drawn from the arith
metic of feeling! And when has feeling ever borne with arithmetic? And after that you fancied yourself the cleverest of all at setting up bounds and dams, for yourself and for others... so you wrapped yourself in a strange curtain... which your eye alone can see!!
Your admiration for your So-and-so never delighted me... even if it was a guarded admiration...
My friend... beware of cringing admiration... it drags your hands along... my friend! Beware of servile love — it turns you into a serviceable mount, its bridle held with an indulgent hand... and indulgence is cheap; it shortens distances!
Speak... what is it?
Listen to me... giving lies in more than the one word "take"... and people's eyes are in more than their faces... in their
hearts, in their ears... I find myself, in my perplexity with you, repeating what you already know... You rose up against your So-and-so because he asked?
I hold that life, all of it, is tales of asking. You rose up against him because he surprised you with the meanest thing you could have imagined? Do you not know, child, that the soul's answer is sometimes... a material gesture?
Remember, my friend, that his request had a prop he begged of you yourself — believe me — of that flash of consent that may glimmer in your eye and cry out in your speech. In every request there is, after all, a question, whose free answer lies in your hands...
Speak! What exactly did he ask of you?
— Money, she answered; that is all he asked...!
