This was not the room of some kittenish little flirt who inherits her mistress’s silk stockings and discarded clothes, secretly sprays herself with Madam’s French perfume, and makes eyes at the master of the house. The woman facing me was not the normal household demon, the lower-orders lover, the alluring siren of an ailing, decadent, bourgeois home. This woman was not my husband’s sweetheart, not even if she kept his portrait in a locket suspended on a lilac ribbon around her neck. Do you know what this woman was like? I’ll tell you what I felt: I felt she was hostile but my equal. She was a woman just as passionate, sensitive, strong, worthy, vulnerable, and full of suffering as I was, as is everyone who is conscious of her rank. I sat in the chair, the lilac ribbon in my hand, unable to utter a word.