'As if you did not know!'
'No, I do not know.'
She uttered the words in so low a tone that Andrea hardly caught them.
'Maria!'
She silently laid her head on Andrea's breast, waiting for him to speak, as if listening to his heart.
He regarded that hapless head, weighed down by the burden of a sad foreboding; he felt the light pressure of that noble, mournful brow upon his breast, which was hardened by falsehood, encased in duplicity as in a cuirass of steel. He was stirred by genuine emotion; a sense of human pity for this most human suffering gripped him by the throat. And yet this agitation of soul resolved itself into lying words and lent a quiver of seeming sincerity to his voice.
'You do not know!—Your voice was so low that it died away upon your lips; at the bottom of your heart something protested against your words; all, all the memories of our love rose up and protested against them. Oh! you do not know that I love you!—'
She remained leaning against him, listening, trembling, recognising or fancying that she recognised in his moving voice the accents of true passion, the accents that intoxicated her and that she supposed were inimitable. And he went on speaking, almost in her ear, in the silence of the room, with his hot breath on her cheek and with pauses that were almost sweeter than words. '—To have one sole thought, continually, every hour, every moment—not to be able to conceive of any happiness but the transcendent one that beams upon me from your mere presence—to live throughout the day in the anticipation—impatient, restless, fierce—of the moment when I shall see you again, and, after you have gone to caress and cherish your image in my heart,——to believe in you alone, to swear by you alone, in you alone to put my faith, my strength, my pride, my whole world, all that I dream and all that I hope——'
She lifted her face all bathed in tears. He ceased to speak, and with his lips arrested the course of the warm drops that flowed over her cheeks. She wept and smiled, caressing his hair with trembling hands, shaken with irrepressible sobs.
'My heart, my dearest heart!'