She blushed slightly. He looked at her, and proceeded more gently with the conversation.
“Are there special prayers in this convent, Vittoria? Are special graces asked for?”
“One grace only,” she replied, with downcast eyes; “one grace only of the Divine Son, Marco.”
“Ah!” he replied without further remark, understanding.
“Do you so very much want to have a son, Vittoria?” he asked in a peculiar tone.
“I desire it ardently,” she broke out suddenly, with an impetuous accent, immediately recovering herself, “I desire nothing else now.”
“Also I want one for you,” he said, vaguely and absently.
“Not for yourself?” was the sharp question. But he did not heed the intense expression.
“As for myself, you understand, my brother Giulio has three sons. The house of Fiore has descendants.”
“Beatrice has been fortunate,” she murmured, with a sigh.
“There, there; you, too, will be fortunate,” he resumed jokingly and laughingly; “you will have a quiverful of sons, too many, I tell you, dear Vittoria, for many sons will give you much worry. Don’t doubt; you are not sterile.”
“Who knows,” she said, with a sorrowful shudder.
“Go to your convent, dear, since you are set on it,” he said, laughing; “the Bambino Gesù will content you, and when you return home He will send you the little one.”
He drew near her to kiss and embrace her. With a cold gesture she repulsed him.
“Hoighty, toighty! Hoighty toighty!” he exclaimed; “why all this rudeness to your lawful husband, Don Marco Fiore?” He tried again to draw her to himself and kiss her. Again still more coldly and hostilely she kept him at a distance.
“We must live from to-day in prayer and mortification,” she replied in glacial tones.
“You resume from to-night your bachelor bedroom.”
“Ah; and am I to keep it for ten days?” he said drily.
“Brava! Brava! And if I am bored in there all alone?” he continued, with signs of annoyance.
“Oh, you won’t bore yourself there!” she replied, with a slightly bitter smile.
He remembered that in that room everything had remained untouched since he had married, that it was full of portraits, big and small, of Maria Guasco, with recollections of their dead dream, their dead love. He understood more than ever the depth of his wife’s thoughts and feelings; he realised her intense pain. So he tried again in pity and tenderness to make her speak, to make her weep.