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* From this description one even becomes slightly confused about the age in which the scene happens.
† Were this collision carried to its extreme it would not be without psychological interest. She is improved by an illicit relationship and the improvement gives her insight into its illicitness. Suppose the improvement had triumphed in the victory of this superior insight so that because of it she gave up the relationship! That Madame W. is a self-contradiction is clear enough, moreover, the bringing out of which is due precisely to the author’s psychological acuity. One is supposed neither to smile at the self-contradiction nor quickly to think it resolved just because it is perceived, still less hastily to condemn it. Indeed, when a man tells us he himself perceives what is reprehensible in his action and yet goes on doing it, let the ethical judge him and the aesthetic find him comical. With a woman it is somewhat different, especially where her strength can be seen in the very frailty of her devotedness. With Dalund she sees what is illicit in the relationship, but if she were without him she would not see it. Once femininely secure in a relationship that fills her whole soul, she can see that it is illicit. But if the relationship is broken off, the womanly needs in her will let her forget in erotic desperation that it was illicit.