It had weighed upon her life like a fatality.

The men who had appeared good at first afterwards became poisoned, turning into egoists and wretches.

Doctor Talberg, on returning from America, had abandoned her in order to marry a young and rich woman, the daughter of a trader, a senator from Hamburg.

Others had equally exploited her youth, taking their share of her gayety and beauty only to marry, later, women who had merely the attractiveness of a great fortune.
She had finally come to hate them all, desiring their extermination, exasperated at the very thought that she needed them to live and could never free herself from this slavery.

Trying to be independent, she had taken up the stage.
"I have danced.