Rebecca. In what way do you mean?
Rosmer. Saw things truly when she believed I loved you, Rebecca.
Rebecca. Truly in THAT respect?
Rosmer (laying his hat down on the table). This is the question I
have been wrestling with--whether we two have deluded ourselves
the whole time, when we have been calling the tie between us
merely friendship.
Rebecca. Do you mean, then, that the right name for it would have
been--?
Rosmer. Love. Yes, dear, that is what I mean. Even while Beata
was alive, it was you that I gave all my thoughts to. It was you
alone I yearned for. It was with you that I experienced peaceful,
joyful, passionless happiness. When we consider it rightly,
Rebecca, our life together began like the sweet, mysterious love
of two children for one another--free from desire or any thought
of anything more. Did you not feel it in that way too? Tell me.
Rebecca (struggling with herself). Oh, I do not know what to
answer.
Rosmer. And it was this life of intimacy, with one another and
for one another, that we took to be friendship. No, dear--the tie
between us has been a spiritual marriage--perhaps from the very
first day. That is why I am guilty. I had no right to it--no right
to it for Beata's sake.
Rebecca. No right to a happy life? Do you believe that, John?
Rosmer. She looked at the relations between us through the eyes
of HER love--judged them after the nature of HER love.
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