“He did not care if she was heartless, vicious and vulgar, stupid and grasping, he loved her. He would rather have misery with one than happiness with the other.”

“He might have known that she would do this; she had never cared for him, she had made a fool of him from the beginning; she had no pity, she had no kindness, she had no charity. The only thing was to accept the inevitable. The pain he was suffering was horrible, he would sooner be dead than endure it; and the thought came to him that it would be better to finish with the whole thing: he might throw himself in the river or put his neck on a railway line; but he had no sooner set the thought into words than he rebelled against it. His reason told him that he would get over his unhappiness in time; if he tried with all his might he could forget her; and it would be grotesque to kill himself on account of a vulgar slut.”

“I would sooner a writer were vulgar than mincing; for life is vulgar, and it is life he seeks.”

“He would not have been the first man to find that he loved his wife more when he was parted from her than was with her, and that the expectation of sexual congress was more exciting than the realisation.”

“Even though he had sacrificed her and cared nothing for her, even though he was callous and unkind, she loved him.”

“He did not care upon what terms he satisfied his passion. He had even a mad, melodramatic idea to drug her.”

“Her tears were partly tears of happiness, for she felt that the strangeness between them was gone. She loved him now with a new love because he had made her suffer.”