"Every time I left you, I felt gentler. Though fatigued I felt free to think of myself, buoyant, wiser, unloaded, as if my sins had been forgiven me.... I had paid my debt; I owed nothing.
"I do not know if work in itself is a good deed. God probably never meant it for us. Not to lie does not mean to discern the truth, and to work is not to find the truth, but it is to have the right to advance toward truth and put oneself in a state of grace and health.
"Then remember that you dared to offer me this miserable fate, me who in doing the same work lived beside you as if under the same roof, who felt imbued with an austere ardor. But you saw nothing, learned nothing, understood nothing. You horrified me. What you did yesterday! Good heavens! You attacked, I defended; we are quits.
"And the money spread out glitteringly to gag me at night....
"You must be just. While you were going through your day's work it never occurred to you that I had my day's work too, and my strong arms and the energy and chastity deep-seated in my body.... What was the value, the slight importance I possess as a person to you? What was my peace to you?
"Even if you make fun of the exigencies of the soul, do you think it's a question of the soul alone? And how about one's relation to other people? You go out of your house on to the street, you see the crowds on their way to shops, offices and factories. You have to look the working-people in the face.... Tell me, how do the men and women who have _nothing to do_ look the workers in the face?
"I see this doesn't touch you. You are withdrawing. To keep you leaning toward me, I myself and I alone have to be the subject under discussion. I must be uncovered, laid naked, by what I say...."
I felt a sudden surge of blood to my cheeks and my lips; our looks crossed like swords.
Here I am with nothing more to do, my arms hanging at my sides, the sudden weight of my useless words on my shoulders. The man follows my example and rises.
"I shall go away, very far away. Don't mind. That's the good of being a woman who works; you're not afraid. You may be at the mercy of misfortune, which is always lurking, but not at the mercy of human beings....
In the silence that cuts in I feel how this man is wishing I'd never go--wishing it so strongly that for a moment he touches love and a path is opened along which I could take a step, but only a single step, no more.