You contradict yourself."
"Yes, I contradict myself; that shows you that I am not even
intelligent."
"You are laughing at me!" cried Newman. "You are mocking me!"
She looked at him intently, and an observer might have said that she was
asking herself whether she might not most quickly end their common pain
by confessing that she was mocking him. "No; I am not," she presently
said.
"Granting that you are not intelligent," he went on, "that you are
weak, that you are common, that you are nothing that I have believed
you were--what I ask of you is not heroic effort, it is a very common
effort. There is a great deal on my side to make it easy. The simple
truth is that you don't care enough about me to make it."
"I am cold," said Madame de Cintre, "I am as cold as that flowing
river."
Newman gave a great rap on the floor with his stick, and a long, grim
laugh. "Good, good!" he cried. "You go altogether too far--you overshoot
the mark. There isn't a woman in the world as bad as you would make
yourself out. I see your game; it's what I said. You are blackening
yourself to whiten others. You don't want to give me up, at all; you
like me--you like me. I know you do; you have shown it, and I have felt
it. After that, you may be as cold as you please! They have bullied you,
I say; they have tortured you.
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