"Is it true?" I went on. "Is it true—what I have learned from my mother?"
She still remained silent. She seemed to be gathering all her strength. Strange! During that interval it did not seem absolutely impossible that she would answer:
"No."
She answered, and I heard less the sound of her words than I saw them outlined by her bloodless lips:
"It is true."
It was a ruder shock perhaps than that given me by my mother's words. Of course, I knew all, I had already lived twenty-four hours with my certitude; and yet this confirmation, so clear, so precise, crushed me to earth, as if it were the first time I had heard the revelation of the irreparable truth.
"It is true!" I repeated instinctively, speaking to myself, with a sensation analogous to that which I would have had, had I found myself living and conscious at the bottom of an abyss.
Then Juliana raised her eyes and fixed them on mine with a sort of spasmodic violence.
"Tullio," she said, "listen."
A choking stopped the voice in her throat.