"Was it so sweet as that?" she asked.
"Yes."
"And yet you have loved better and longer in other days."
"As I was a better man," he said, finding no other answer, for he knew it was true.
Maddalena sighed. Perhaps she had hoped that this last time he would say what he had never said—that he had loved her better than Bianca Corleone.
"You must have been different then." She spoke a little coldly, in spite of herself. A moment later she smiled. "How foolish it is of me to think of making comparisons, now that it is all over," she said. "So you are not coming to Tuscany this summer, and I shall not see you till next autumn. Why do you not come?"
"I want to be alone a long time," answered Ghisleri. "It is much better. I am bad company, and besides, I am not strong enough to wander about the world yet. I need a long rest."
"It seems so strange to think of you as not being strong."
"Yes—I who used to be so proud of my strength. I believe that was my greatest vanity when I was very young."
"How full of contradictions you are!" Maddalena exclaimed, as she had often done before.