“You have never thought of leaving me?”

“Never.”

“Am I always your lady?”

“My lady, you, and you only.”

“Oh, Marco!” she sighed, letting her face fall on his breast, yielding to an emotion which was too violent.

He had become very pale. His eyebrows were knotted in sad thought. He took her face, covered with tears, and wiped it with his handkerchief, and asked her with a voice, where already suspicion was pressing, and where jealousy was hissing insidiously—

“What is this, Maria? Tell me all.”

“Oh, I can’t, I can’t,” she said desperately.

“Tell me all at once,” he rejoined in angry impatience.

“No, no, Marco, it is nothing. I am mad this morning.”

“That is impossible. You were calm and serene yesterday evening. There is something. There is somebody. Whom have you seen this morning?”

The question was so precise and abrupt that the woman of truth hesitated, and dared no longer be silent.

“I have seen Gianni Provana.”

“Ah!” he exclaimed, twisting his moustaches; “did you see him here?”

“No, elsewhere.”

“Elsewhere? In the street?”

“Almost.”

“You met him by accident?”

“Not by accident.”

“Maria, Maria!” he cried; “why have you done this?”

“I have erred; pardon me, Marco.”

She humbled herself, taking his hands to kiss them in an act of profound contrition.

But releasing himself, he made two or three turns of the room, then returned to her.

“And what has that reptile said to you? Repeat to me what that horrid man said to you.”

“Oh, he is so horrid as to make one shudder.”

“Repeat it; repeat it at once, Maria.”

“How am I to tell them? They are infamous things.”

“Against me?”

“Against us.”

“But speak, at least speak! Do you wish to make me die of anger and impatience?”

“No, Marco. I will tell you all. Come, sit beside me, be tranquil. I don’t like to see you so. You must be calm, my love, so that I may tell you all; you must be sweet and loving, and not so disturbed and wicked.”

“Maria, I am waiting,” he said, almost without listening to her, folding his arms.

“Listen; it is true I ought not to have gone to the meeting with Gianni Provana. I have erred greatly, but a secret terror has been too much for me; I wished to know what he had to tell me. Could it not be perhaps a secret threat for me, for you?”

“I fear nothing, Maria.”

“I, too, nothing; but I went to know. That man is so perverse, and he is always seeing my husband.”

“Then he came for Emilio Guasco?” he exclaimed, rising.

“Yes,” she said with candour.

“To tell you what in the name of Emilio Guasco?”

“To tell me that you no longer love me.”

“It is false, I swear!” exclaimed Marco Fiore, with vehemence.

“To suggest to me that I no longer love you.”

“Swear that it is false.”

“I swear it,” she replied, with a grave voice.

“And then? and then?”

“And then, as our love had been killed, it was necessary and right to re-enter the lawful, to re-enter the moral, to resume my place in society, to return esteemed, respected, honoured.”

“That is to say?”

“To return to my husband.”

“He said this atrocious thing to you?”

“This atrocious thing.”

“Of his own initiative?”

“No, Marco.”

“So,” he exclaimed in the height of anger, “this husband of yours, this friend of his, beyond me, above me, and against me, laughing at me, propose that you should leave me and return to Casa Guasco?”

“Yes.”

“After all that has happened?”

“Yes.”

“After three years of a life of love, our only and unique life of love, you should return to Casa Guasco?”

“It is so.”

The physiognomy of Marco Fiore became transfigured. A convulsion of bitterness, of suffering, of fury shook it continuously; that slightly morbid insouciance, which composed its poetry together with its youth, had quite vanished, showing only a face of energy, crossed by sentiments more unrestrainedly virile.

“And your husband, whom they say is a man of honour, would he forget the dishonour?”

“He is ready to forget it.”

“Would a gentleman forget an offence so open and so cruel?”

“He has been ready, he says, for a long time to pardon.”

“But why? Is he a rascal perhaps? Is he a saint perhaps? Has he blood in his impoverished veins? Has he a heart in that money-grubbing breast of his?”

“He says that he has suffered; that he is suffering.”

“But why does he suffer?—through amour propre? through pride? through envy? through punctiliousness?”

She was silent. He, as one mad, continued—

“What has made him suffer?—the injury? the insult? the public shame? ridicule? Why, after having suffered, does he pardon?”

Still she was silent.

“And why does he want you? To shame me? To have his revenge? So that the world may mock me as it has mocked him? Why does he want you? To adorn his salons? To expose the jewels he has given you? To decorate his box at the theatre? Why does he want you?”

With head bowed and hands joined together on her knees, she remained silent and pale. He went towards her and forced her to rise and look at him.

“You know, Maria, why he forgets, why he pardons you, why he wants you. You know and you won’t tell me.”

She shook her head in denial.

“You know, you know; they have told you; repeat it to me! If you don’t tell me, I am going away and I am never going to return again.”

Maria trembled.

“I know,” she stammered, “I know, but I did not wish to tell. Provana says ... that my husband loves me, he forgets because he loves me; he pardons because he loves me; he wants me because he loves me. That is all.”

Violently, brutally, he took her in his arms, and pressed her to himself.

“I love you, Maria, I only love you.”

“Oh!” she exclaimed, with emotion; “as once upon a time, as once upon a time?”

Pressed to him, closed as in a vice in his arms, he kissed her on the hair, the eyes, the mouth, murmuring—

“I love you, Maria, as at first, as always, for ever, I love you.”

Radiant with joy, crying with joy, she threw back her head as if inebriated.

“You are mine, Maria, it is true?”

“Yours, yours, yours.”

“No one else’s ever?”

“No one else’s.”

“I shall never let you be taken by any one, Maria.”

“No one can take me.”

“I would kill him first, Maria, then myself.”

“Marco, Marco, I adore you!”

For a moment his encircling arms loosened, as he thought for an instant. A powerful exaltation, proceeding from a powerful instinct, was compelling him. And she was intoxicated with joy of him.

“Maria, will you do as I wish?”

“Yes, like a slave.”

“Good; let us go away together.”

“Let us go.”

“To-morrow?”

“No, this evening.”

“This evening? Where?”

“I don’t know. Far away. Together. Somewhere where there are not these infamous persons and horrible annoyances, Maria. Far away, where your soul and your person may be only mine, without remorse, without reproach, without remembrances. Together, away from here, far off.”

“Let us go, Marco.”

“You follow me with desire, with enthusiasm?”

“With desire, with enthusiasm.”

“As if you were leaving for ever, never more to return?”

“As if I were going to love and to death, Marco.”

“This evening, Maria?”

“This