Quotation from: The Arrow of Gold

Written by: Joseph Conrad

"I have often asked myself whether you weren't really a very
ambitious person, Dona Rita."

"And I ask myself whether you have any heart." She was looking
straight at him and he gratified her with the usual cold white
flash of his even teeth before he answered.

"Asking yourself? That means that you are really asking me. But
why do it so publicly? I mean it. One single, detached presence
is enough to make a public. One alone. Why not wait till he
returns to those regions of space and air--from which he came."