“My poor child! you have not made me happy, but miserable. No one can make me happy now. I do not love you now—you are a different person now, and you can never return to be what you were. That is the worst of all: you can never return to your former innocence.”
“I can bear to hear you say even that; for now I perceive the mistake I made. I should not have, thought of the difference between us: I should only have had one thought—that you had offered me your love and that I was ready to offer you my love. That should have been enough for me. You were right, I was wrong. Good-bye.”
He looked at her for a few moments—tears were in his eyes and on his cheeks—then he turned away with a passionate gesture, crying in his native tongue:
“Mother—mother in heaven! I loved her because she was of a nature the same as yours—saint-like as a lily—shrinking from the world—in the world but having nothing in common with the world. I loved her because I thought that she was as you were. I will not be a traitor to your ideal—to your memory.”
He returned to her.
“I am alone in the world; but I know that the spirit of that saint, my mother, looks down upon me from her heaven, and will comfort me. My heart is broken. Addio! Addio! I do not mean to be cruel—tell me that you do not accuse me of being cruel!”
“I do not accuse you. I think I understand you—that is all.”
“Addio—addio—addio!”
The sound of his voice grew less with every word.