to steal him in defiance of every law, every moral authority, dixit Duras

The tears wake her. She looks at you. She looks at the room. And again at you. She strokes your hand. Asks: Why are you crying? You say it’s for her to say, she’s the one who ought to know.

She answers softly, gently: Because you don’t love. You say that’s it.

She asks you to say it clearly. You say: I don’t love.

She says: Never

You say: Never.

She says: The wish to be about to kill a lover, to keep him for yourself, yourself alone, to take him, steal him in defiance of every law, every moral authority—you don’t know what that is, you’ve never experienced it?

You say: Never.

She looks at you, repeats: A dead man’s a strange thing.

"The malady of death" (1982),  Marguerite Duras