“If we had still loved each other we should not have left each other,” she declared without hesitation.
“When you returned to this house to laugh at me, to make a fool of your tortured husband, you were in love with Marco Fiore, and Marco Fiore was in love with you.”
“I should not have placed a foot in your house, understand, if I had still loved Marco,” she proclaimed, proudly and coldly.
“Cursed be that evening! Cursed be that hour!” the man exclaimed, mad with jealousy and suffering.
“If not, wouldn’t you have come? Wouldn’t you have come, eh, woman without soul or heart?”
“I should never have come,” she declared.
“You are a monster of pride and aridness!” he cried; but in his voice sorrow conquered anger.
“I have tamed my pride before you, Emilio, don’t forget it,” she replied.
“When? How? You humiliate yourself? You?”
“When I accepted the pardon you offered me. I could have refused it, but I conquered my pride. I bowed and almost prostrated myself before you, and you pardoned me. Remember that; remember that.”
“Cursed be those words; cursed the lips that pronounced them.”
Maria stretched out her hand involuntarily, as if to stop her husband from a mortal fall.
“Weren’t you sincere at that moment?” she asked in a dull voice.
“I was sincere,” he replied, with a gulp.
“Did that pardon come from the bottom of your heart?”
“From the bottom, from the very depths of my heart.”
“Why do you then curse that moment, those words and that sentiment?”
“That is true; but I don’t love him. His letters are sacred, like those of one dead, like those of one dear to me.”
“You love him; you love him!” exclaimed Emilio, in a monotony of desperation; “you keep every gift of his.”
“I don’t love him; but what I have is dear to me as a funereal memory.”
“You love him, and he loves you. The house at Santa Maria Maggiore has remained as it was. It belongs to him and you.”
“But I have never been there again,” she replied disdainfully.
“I know, I know. I know where you go. But you will go there to-morrow perhaps, and he will come to-morrow. Oh, this evening, if I had never seen this evening!”
He turned, wringing his hands under a pain he could no longer resist.
“I saw your eyes, Maria; I saw his when you met at Casa Nerola. I saw all. And Vittoria Fiore, the poor unfortunate, saw you. She was as pale as death. This time, understand, I can’t endure the insult; I shall kill you and him. But endure this shame again--never, never!”