human
You have told me the most dreadful thing I ever heard, she said at last, in a low tone.
gpt
Is she nothing to you? Really nothing? Can you never think kindly of her again?
human
No. Why should I? That is-- he hesitated.
gpt
I could not explain it,
human
It does not seem human, said Francesca.
gpt
You would have a memory of her--something--some touch of sadness--I wonder whether you really loved her as much as you thought you did?
human
You do not know what such love means, he said slowly.
gpt
It is God--faith--goodness--everything. It is heaven on earth, and earth in heaven, in one heart. When it is gone there is nothing left. It went hard. It will not come back now. The heart itself is gone. There is nothing for it to come to. You think me cold, you are shocked because I speak indifferently of her. She lied to me. She lied and acted in every word and deed of her life with me. She deceived herself a little at first, and she deceived me mortally afterwards. It was all an immense, loathsome, deadly lie. I lived through the truth. Why should I wish to go back to the lie again? She died, telling me that she died for me. She died, having written to Reanda that she died for him. I do not judge her. God will. But God Himself could not make me love the smallest shadow of her memory. It is impossible. I am beyond life. I am outside it. My eternity has begun.
human
Is it not a little for her sake that you wish to save her father?
gpt
No. It is a matter of honour, and nothing else, since I injured him, as the world would say, by taking his daughter from her husband. Do you understand? Can you put yourself a little in my position? It is not because I care whether he lives or dies, or dies a natural death or is stabbed in the back by a peasant. It is because I ought to care. I do many things because I ought to care to do them, though the things and their consequences are all one to me, now.
human
It cannot last, said Francesca, sadly.
gpt
You will change as you grow older.
human
No. That is a thing you can never understand, he answered.
gpt
I am two individuals. The one is what you see, a man more or less like other men, growing older--a man who has a certain mortal, earthly memory of that dead woman, when the real man is unconscious. But the real man is beyond growing old, because he is beyond feeling anything. He is stationary, outside of life. The world is a blank to him and always will be.