‘You see that I was right,’ she said. ‘Your honour is safe.’
His face changed in a way that frightened her. She thought he was choking. An instant later he sprang to his feet and left her side, pressing both his hands to his ears like a man raving. His voice rang out with a mad laugh.
‘My honour!’
Maria laid one hand on the back of the chair he had left, to steady herself, for the shock of understanding him was more than she could bear. Scarcely knowing that her lips moved she called him back.
‘Diego! Diego! Hear me!’
‘Hear you? Have I not heard?’ He turned upon her like a madman. ‘Have I not heard and remembered every word you have spoken, those eight months and more? How you would tear the memory of that man from your heart? How you called God to witness that you would forget him? How you and he took an oath never to meet again? Have I not heard you, and forgiven, and believed, and trusted, and loved you like the miserable fool I am? And you ask me to hear you again? Oh, never, never! You have promised and you have lied to me, you have called God to witness and you have blasphemed, you have asked for trust and you have betrayed me with that man—and now you tell me he has saved my honour. My honour! My honour!’
Maria closed her eyes and grasped the chair. But she would not bend her head to the storm as she had bowed it long ago.
‘I am innocent. I have done none of these things.’
She could find no other words, and he would not have listened to more, for he was beside himself and began to rave again, while she stood straight and white beside the chair. Sometimes his voice was thick, as his fury choked him, sometimes it was shrill and wild, when his rage found vent. But each time, as he paused, exhausted, to draw breath, her words came to him calm and clear in the moment’s stillness.
‘I am innocent.’