“To become what you tell me, Provana,” she replied precisely, in a hard voice, “I ought to return to my husband.”
“After three years of public scandal, of life together with Marco Fiore in the same city, under his eyes--my husband would do this?”
“He would do it because he believes in the law of pardon.”
“I!” she proclaimed. “I shall never love him, and he knows it.”
“In spite of that, he desires to pardon you, and to give you back all that you have lost by your passion.”
“A great many good people would never do it!”
“Because he has suffered much and learned much.”
“What have his sufferings to do with me?”
“Pity is not enough to do this, Provana.”
“Because he loves you,” Gianni Provana declared at last.
“What a poltroon!” she sneered with infinite contempt.
“Doesn’t his pardon seem a sublime act to you? Is he not a hero?”
“I am a miserable creature made of clay, and I do not understand sublimity.”
They were silent. The weather became warmer and slightly heavier, and the singing of the little birds in the trees grew weaker. Some of the roses had scattered their leaves on the ground.
“And with all this what are we going to do with Marco Fiore?” she broke in with irony.
“Yes, with him. What will he do when, according to you, I have returned to my husband? What will become of Marco?”
“He will be content to marry Vittoria Casalta. The girl has been waiting for him for three years.”
“Ah!” she exclaimed, in a voice scarcely recognisable.
Without greeting or looking at him she turned her back, and went quickly round the corner of the portico.
Nor did Gianni Provana dare to follow her.
Maria had searched for Marco Fiore for an hour in all the places she supposed he might be; at the great door of Palazzo Fiore, in the via Bocca di Leone, leaving him word scribbled in pencil on a small piece of paper; at the Hunt Club, which he sometimes looked into towards noon; at the fencing rooms in the via Muratte, where two or three times a week he used to undergo a long sword exercise.
Porters, butlers, servants had seen the beautiful and elegant lady, dressed in white, hidden behind a white veil, ask with insistence for the noble Marco Fiore and go away slowly, as if not convinced that he was not in one of those places. Towards noon, agitated and silent, consumed by her emotion, she entered the little villa at Santa Maria Maggiore, and there, at the threshold, was Marco, who had just arrived, with a slightly languid smile on his lips and the habitual softness in his eyes.