The furniture of the room was in its accustomed place, but there was missing from the table under the round mirror, the crystal phials, the tortoise-shell combs, the boxes, the brushes, all of those small objects that assist at the preparation of feminine beauty. In a corner stood a species of large, zinc kettle shaped like a guitar; and within it sparkled water tinted a delicate pink from some essence. The water exhaled subtle perfume that blended in the air with the perfume of cyprus-powder. The exhalation held in it some inherent quality of sensuousness.
“Rosa! Rosa!” Don Giovanni cried, in a voice almost extinguished by the insurmountable anxiety that he felt surging through him.
The woman appeared.
“Tell me how it happened! To what place has she gone? And when did she go? And why?” begged Don Giovanni, making with his mouth a grimace both comic and childish, in order to restrain his grief and force back the tears.
He seized Rosa by both wrists, and thus incited her to speak, to reveal.
“I do not know, Signor,” she answered. “This morning she put her clothes in her portmanteau, sent for Leones’ carriage, and went away without a word. What can you do about it? She will return.”
“Return-n-n!” sobbed Don Giovanni, raising his eyes in which already the tears had started to overflow. “Has she told you when? Speak!” And this last cry was almost threatening and rabid.
“Eh?... to be sure she said to me, ‘Addio, Rosa. We will never see each other again...! But, after all ... who can tell! Everything is possible.’”
Don Giovanni sank dejectedly upon a chair at these words, and set himself to weeping with so much force of grief that the woman was almost touched by it.
“Now what are you doing, Don Giovà? Are there not other women in this world? Don Giovà, why do you worry about it...?”