"He was in that crucial age when a woman begins to regret the fact that he remained faithful to a husband that after all has never wanted, and in the twilight purple of her beauty gives one last, urgent choice between the maternal and the feminine. Life, which makes time seem to have already given all the answers, it becomes once again in question, for the last time shaking the magic needle of desire, oscillating between hope of an erotic experience and the ultimate resignation. A woman then has to decide between living their own fate or that of their children, between behave as a woman or as a mother. And the baron, keen on these issues, thought he noticed in it that dangerous vacillation between the passion for life and sacrifice. "
