‘Yes,’ she repeated, ‘I know he will try to be kind.’
Castiglione merely nodded and said nothing, but Maria saw his looks; and she was not all a saint yet, for with the sight came the thrill of fierce elemental motherhood, rejoicing in the strength of the man who could kill. There was nothing very saintly about that, and she knew it.
‘We must not think of such things,’ she said, as she felt the deep vibrations grow faint and die away. ‘Let us take it for granted that my husband will be very just. That is all I have a right to ask of him.’
Again Castiglione bent his head in assent. Then both were silent for a long time.
‘Am I never to know anything of your life after this?’ he asked suddenly.
‘You will know what every one may know,’ she said.
‘Nothing more? Only to hear that you are ill or well? Never to be told whether he really does what he can to make it bearable for you? May I not have news of you sometimes? Through Giuliana Parenzo, for instance? Is it to be always outer darkness?’
‘Giuliana will know what you all will know, and no more,’ Maria answered. ‘If I must not tell you what I suffer, do you think I would tell her? I shall not tell myself!’ There was one bitter note in that phrase. ‘You will always know something that no one else can,’ she went on, and her voice softened. ‘And so shall I, and that must be enough for us. Is it so little?’
‘Ah, no! It is all of us two that really lives!’