human
I had forgotten that was in the portfolio,
gpt
What do you take it away for? I had not half done looking at it. Who is the original?
human
One I don't care to mention.
gpt
Because?
human
Because the sight of that picture gives me a twinge of what I ought to be hardened against--regret.
gpt
Regret! Is any woman worth that?
human
She was.
gpt
I don't believe it; and I fancied you and I thought alike on such points. Of all the women for whom we feel twinges of conscience or self-reproach in melancholy moments, how many _loved us_? Moralists and poets sentimentalize over it, and make it a stalking-horse whereby to magnify our sins and consign us more utterly to perdition, while they do for themselves a little bit of poetic morality cheaply; but in reality there are uncommonly few women who can love, to begin with, and in the second, vanity, avarice, jealousy, desires for pretty toilettes, one or other, or all combined, have quite as much to do with their 'sacrifice' for us as anything.
human
Quite true; but--there are women and women, perhaps, and it was not of that sort of regret that I spoke.
gpt
Of what sort, then?