"You know, Emile," she added, "I tell you very much, but you tell me
very little. Not that I wish to ask anything--no. I respect all your
reserve. And about your work: you tell me all that. It is a great
thing in my life, your work. Perhaps you don't realize how sometimes I
live in the book that you are doing, almost as if I were writing it
myself. But your inner life--"
"But I have been frankness itself with you," said Artois. "To no one
have I ever said so much as to you."
"Yes, I know, about many things. But about emotion, love,--not
friendship, the other love--do you get on without that? When you say
your nature has always been older than mine, do you mean that it has
always been harder to move by love, that it has had less need of
love?"
"I think so. For many years in my life I think that work has filled
the place love occupies in many, perhaps in most men's lives.
Everything comes second to work. I know that, because if any one
attempts to interfere with my work, or to usurp any of the time that
should be given to it, any regard I may have for that person turns at
once to irritation, almost to hatred.
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