As if there could be anything worse than the sepulchral monotony of my life, as it formerly was!
And yet I know—I know!—that this is not happiness: that this romantic adventure of mine will have no morrow.
Put an end to it? I cannot; for just now the man is as necessary to me as the air I breathe. But some time or other I shall not love him any more; and then I shall hold it as a sacred duty to pay him for his deeds in the past by my future conduct.
And she, this my poor love! stands here, gazing with eyes full of frantic terror at her end, that will and must come some day!
The keynote in the tragedy of woman's life is the fact that her need for permanent love stands in contradiction with men's instincts and with their interests. Wiazewski calls this her "higher culture." I think that Schopenhauer's justification of this need as simply a case of design in nature is far more convincing. For how can we see any superiority in an instinct that we find equally developed in the most refined inamorata with her deep emotions, and in the average middle-class woman, all given up to passivity and routine?
