is only one woman who loves me, and she is you, Maria—you,” he replied, as if to finish the discussion.
She listened attentively from the very first words of the sentence, attentively as if to find in them a trace or a recollection of past things, but she did not hear there quite what she wished. The words were the same, but the voice was no longer the same which pronounced them, and no longer the same, perhaps, was the man who said them. A sense of delusion for an instant, only for an instant, was depicted on her face; an expression, however, which he did not notice.
“I have never understood, Marco,” she resumed in a grave voice, “if you loved this Vittoria Casalta seriously.”
“What does it matter now?” he exclaimed, a little vexed.
“No, it doesn’t matter, it is true. Still, I should have liked to have heard it from you.”
“How many times have you asked this, Maria?” he said, between reproof and increasing vexation.
“Also you have asked me pretty often, Marco, if I ever loved my husband,” she retorted disdainfully.
At such a reminder the countenance of Marco Fiore became convulsed. Every slightly feminine trace disappeared from his rather pale and delicate face, and the firm and obstinate lines of his profile and chin became more accentuated, manly and rough. His lips trembled as he spoke.
“Why do you name your husband? Why do you name him, Maria?”
“Because he is not dead, Marco; because he exists, because he lives,” she proclaimed imperiously, her large eyes flashing.
“I hate him. Don’t speak to me of him!” he exclaimed with agitation, rising and kicking the chair aside to walk about.
“But why do you hate him? Why? Tell me, tell me.”
“Because he is the only man of whom I can be, of whom I ought to be, jealous, Maria,” he exclaimed, beside himself with exasperation. Then Maria smiled joyfully, a smile which he did not observe.
“I renounced him, his name and his fortune for you,” she replied simply.
“Do you regret it?” he asked, still hot with anger, but somewhat distractedly.
“I do not regret it,” she replied, after an imperceptible moment of hesitation.
“But, Maria, I am sure he regrets you very much.”
“No.”
“I am as certain as if he had told me, and I am certain he will get you back, Maria.”
“No.”
“Yes, he will get you back.”
“Covering himself with shame?”
“Yes, because he loves you.”
“Covering himself with ridicule.”
“He loves you, he loves you.”
“Knowing that I do not love him.”
“What does that matter? He will take you back to try to make you love him.”
“This is madness.”
“All those who love are mad,” murmured Marco Fiore very sadly.
Stupefied and suffering, she looked at him. Each looked at the other as if to recognise themselves. They were the same who, strangely, every day and every evening, scarcely found themselves together without, after a few minutes, involuntarily irritating with curious and cruel fingers the old wounds which seemed to be healing, which their restless and disturbed minds caused to bleed again.
Here she was, Donna Maria Guasco Simonetti, graceful and exquisite, she who had been the object of a thousand desires, repulsed by her serene austerity and boundless pride, who had suddenly loved Marco Fiore madly and faithfully for three years. Here she was in that house where she had come to live alone, after abandoning the conjugal abode for three years, to live apart in a strange, constant and ardent love, forgetful of every other thing. Here she was, ever more graceful in the plenitude of her womanly grace, in the atmosphere of exclusive luxury with which she was surrounded, and in garments which reflected her fascination.
And the man, Marco Fiore, young, trembling with life, who had come there that evening, an impassioned lover who had not tolerated sharing the woman of his love with the husband, he had not fallen at her feet, infatuated as usual by his mortal infatuation; he had not taken her to his arms to press her to himself, to kiss her as his own.
Instead they had given themselves, as for some time, to a sad duel of words, sometimes sarcastic, sometimes angry, evoking the absent figures of the two betrayed, of Vittoria Casalta, Marco’s betrothed, of Emilio Guasco, the husband of Donna Maria.
Both tried to subdue themselves. She crossed the quiet room, and adjusted some knick-knacks on the pianoforte, which was covered with a peculiar flowered fabric, her profile was bent slightly in a pleasing way beneath the dense shadow of her magnificent hair.
Marco opened a cigarette case, and asked, with a voice already become expressionless—
“May I smoke?”
“Do smoke.”
“Would you like a cigarette?”
“No, Marco.”
She returned to the sofa, throwing herself down gently, and drawing under her head a cushion to support her mass of hair. So they remained for a while, he smoking his cigarette slowly, and she looking at a distant part of the room, her hands stretched along her body.
“Have you found some place for us, Marco, for August?”
“I am very uncertain,” he murmured. “In whatever holiday place one goes, however far away, one meets people.”
“Far too many,” she added.
“You don’t wish to meet any one?”
“That is so; I should like not to.”
“It is impossible, Maria.”
“People always make me suffer so.”
“Why, dear?”
“I don’t know.”
After an instant he resumed quietly—
“Let us remain in Rome.”
She trembled, and raised her eyebrows slightly.
“In Rome? In Rome in August?”
“If we can’t go anywhere else,” he added, without noticing Maria’s surprise.
“You renounce the holiday and travelling which we have had every year, Marco! Do you renounce them willingly?”
