for me; you wouldn’t believe it. And because by that time I understood everything I made my fiancé promise that he would never touch me. Two years later he died in Africa. I pined so much—through being romantic or something of the sort—that they never tried to make a match for me again. I thought that I’d got the question settled for ever.
“And I forced myself, you know, to believe that I had some obligation to him and that I ought to be true to him even after his death, until finally I grew to believe that I had been in love with him. Now I see that all the time I was only acting to myself and that I had never felt anything more than foolish disillusion.
“It’s curious, isn’t it, that I’m telling you all these things about myself? You know, it’s a great relief to speak about oneself like this without keeping anything back.
“When you arrived I thought to begin with that you were like that professor of mathematics. I was even frightened of you, darling. He’ll give me an exercise to do, I thought, and my heart began to beat again.
“A horse simply intoxicated me. When I was on a horse I felt that I didn’t need love. And I rode insanely.
“I always imagined that love was something vulgar and . . . terribly revolting. You see, I still can’t deal with it; at the same time it frightens me and masters me. And now I’m glad that I’m like any other woman. When I was little I was afraid of water. They showed me the strokes of swimming on dry land, but I would not go near the lake; I
