...
"I don't know what she thought about it. She said Monday or Tuesday, whichever suited you best. Of course she feels suspicious, but she also feels curious, and she's bound to imagine, with that bourgeois religious upbringing of hers...for she's the one who had had a bourgeois religious upbringing, and she makes no attempt to shake off its influence –on the contrary, it's been growing more marked for years now, gloomier and more repressive; she wasn't like that when I first knew her, and that's why I can't bear her any longer and why I need you so badly, because you bring me freedom, as you well know; but on the other hand I must try not to hurt her more than I can help, because of the children, and because...oh, you know why, and if I love you so much it's because you understand it all so well, because you've told me these things yourself, because it all seems simple to you, and to me too when I'm with you, whereas with her...oh, she doesn't say anything; particularly now, but she doesn't have to say anything; with her, everything is complicated, ridiculously and appallingly complicated –do you understand what I mean?"
"I understand perfectly."
Michel Butor / A Change of Heart (:151)
