Teodora. You know so much more about it than I do!
Mercedes. [Pointedly.] Believe me, admiration is not far from love.
Teodora. What do I admire?
Mercedes. This youth's courage.
Teodora. His nobility.
Mercedes. Quite so, but that's the beginning.
Teodora. What folly!
Mercedes. It is folly—but on your side.
Teodora. You persist! Ever this accursed idea!—while it is with immense, with infinite pity that I am filled.
Mercedes. For whom?
Teodora. For whom else but Julian?
Mercedes. Have you never learnt, Teodora, that in a woman's heart pity and forgetfulness may mean one and the same thing?
Teodora. I beseech you—Mercedes—silence!
Mercedes. I wish to let light in upon the state of your mind,—to turn upon it the lamp of truth, lit by my experience.
Teodora. I hear you, but while I listen, it seems no longer a sister, a friend, a mother that speaks to me, so hateful are your words. Your lips seem to speak at inspiration of the devil's prompting. Why should you strive to convince me that little by little I am ceasing to love my husband, and that more and more I am imbued with an impure tenderness, with a feeling that burns and stains? I who love Julian as dearly as ever, who would give the last drop of blood in my body for a single breath of life for him—for him, from whom I am now separated—[points to his room]—why, I should like
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