"Doesn't it bore you to wait?" she asked.
"I am never bored here. When I have this lovely sight before my eyes."
"But you can't always be looking at me," she said, laughing, trying to turn the conversation to a jest.
"That's a fatal misfortune, as they say in novels. I should like to pass my whole life near to you. Instead, I'm obliged to pass it among a lot of people who are utterly indifferent to me. A great misfortune!"
"It's not your fault," she said, with a faint smile.
"It certainly isn't. But that doesn't console me. Shall we try it--passing our lives together? One can overcome misfortunes. Our whole lives--that will mean many years."
"But I am married," she said, feeling that the talk was becoming dangerous.
"Oh, that's nothing," he cried emphatically.
"Caracciolo, I believe you've found the means to see me no more. What do you want from me?"
"Nothing, dear lady, nothing," he answered, with genuine grief in his face and voice.
"Then you ought not to risk destroying one of your friendships. What would Cesare have said if he had heard you for the last half hour?"
"Oh, nothing. He couldn't have heard me, you know, because he's never here."
"Sometimes he is," she said, with sudden emotion.
"In your heart. I know it. It's an agreeable home for him, the more so because he can find others of the same sort wherever he goes."
"One of my usual vulgarities. I'm speaking ill of your husband."
But to soften the severity of this command, she offered him a box of cigarettes.
And he began to smoke, looking at one of her slippers of lilac satin embroidered with silver, which escaped from beneath her train. She sat with her elbow on the table, thinking. It was midnight. In a few minutes Caracciolo would be gone; and Cesare couldn't delay much longer about coming home.
Luigi Caracciolo seemed to divine her thoughts.
"After this cigarette, I will leave you. I'm afraid I've given you no great idea of my wit."
"Small harm! I hope you believe, though, that I have a heart."
"All the better. One day or another you will remember what I have said to you this evening, and understand it."
"You had a very happy inspiration, to dress in lilac. It's such a tender colour. That's the tint one sees in the sunsets at Venice. Have you ever been at Venice?"