You had the misfortune to make a mistake
in thinking you loved Count Pozaldez."
"How should a sixteen-year-old child know? The first passably good-
looking, well-bred man who flatters her wins her heart."
"That is only too true. But if a young girl throws away her heart so
lightly, she has no right to complain if she has to repent of it for
the rest of her life."
"But that is a terrible theory!" exclaimed the countess, and dropped
his hand "What? One wakes to a knowledge of the world and of life--
one is wretched, one sees that there is such a thing as happiness,
and how it may be obtained, and one is not to stretch out a hand to
grasp it? You would really be so cruel as to say to a woman--young,
and in need of love--in childish ignorance and folly you were guilty
of a mistake, all is over for you, abandon all claims to love and
hope, sunshine and life, pass your years in mourning, and bury
yourself alive, you have no further right to share in the joys of
life?"
Wilhelm left her string of passionate questions unanswered, and
continued the thread of his former discourse:
"But most certainly an older and more sensible woman, who should
have learned wisdom from a first error, has no right to be guilty of
a second one.
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