‘Balduccio!’ She called to him gently, for he was looking down at the street again. ‘Shall I give you back your word and tell you to go away for a long time, if it’s going to be so hard for you?’
‘No!’
The single syllable was rough and strong, for he resented what she had said. She rose too and went to him at the window.
‘Are you angry with me?’ she asked humbly.
His hand grasped her bare wrist and tightened upon it almost as if he meant to hurt her, and he spoke in short, harsh sentences.
‘No, I am not angry. I love you too much. You don’t understand what I feel. How should you? I’ve been as faithful to you as you’ve been to your husband all these years. And now I’m with you, and we are alone, and we love each other, and I’m nothing but a man after all—and if you look at me in the old way I shall go mad or kill you.’
He drew her wrist roughly to him and kissed her hand once, roughly, and dropped it. He had done that in the old days too, and Maria saw it all again in a violent flash, as men see danger ahead in a storm at night, lit up by quivering lightning.
She drew breath sharply and turned away from him. She leaned upon the mantelpiece and rested her throbbing forehead upon her hands.
‘Oh, why have we these earthly bodies of ours?’ she moaned. ‘Why? why? Why could not God have made us like the angels?’
‘Why not, indeed!’ echoed Castiglione, in bitter unbelief.