I know that I am a scoundrel, and that let my fellow-men treat me as badly as they please, they can never give me worse usage than I deserve.

And am I a man to talk about love, or to ask a woman to share my life?
Good God, what a noble partner I should offer her! what a happy existence I could assure her!" "But if the woman loved you, she would only love you better for being unfortunate." "Yes, if she was very young and foolish and romantic.

But don't you think I should be a villain if I traded on her girlish folly?
She would love me for a year or two perhaps, and bear all the changes of my temper; but the day would come when she would awake from her delusion, and know that she had been cheated.

She would see other women--less gifted than herself, probably--and would see the market they had made of their charms; would see them rich and honoured and happy, and would stand aside in the muddy streets to be splashed by the dirt from their carriage-wheels.

And then she would consider the price for which she had bartered her youth and her beauty, and would hate the man who had cheated her.