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"You say degrading ... don't say that. Those words have no

meaning for me," she said in a shaking voice. She did not want

him now to say what was untrue. She had nothing left her but his

love, and she wanted to love him. "Don't you understand that from

the day I loved you everything has changed for me? For me there

is one thing, and one thing only-your love. If that's mine, I

feel so exalted, so strong, that nothing can be humiliating to

me. I am proud of my position, because ... proud of being ...

proud...." She could not say what she was proud of. Tears of

shame and despair choked her utterance. She stood still and

sobbed.

He felt, too, something swelling in his throat and twitching in

his nose, and for the first time in his life he felt on the point

of weeping. He could not have said exactly what it was touched

him so. He felt sorry for her, and he felt he could not help her,

and with that he knew that he was to blame for her wretchedness,

and that he had done something wrong.