“No,” said Marco vivaciously.
“She still loves you,” the woman repeated authoritatively, almost imperiously.
“There is only one woman who loves me, and she is you, Maria—you,” he replied, as if to finish the discussion.
She listened attentively from the very first words of the sentence, attentively as if to find in them a trace or a recollection of past things, but she did not hear there quite what she wished. The words were the same, but the voice was no longer the same which pronounced them, and no longer the same, perhaps, was the man who said them. A sense of delusion for an instant, only for an instant, was depicted on her face; an expression, however, which he did not notice.
“I have never understood, Marco,” she resumed in a grave voice, “if you loved this Vittoria Casalta seriously.”
“What does it matter now?” he exclaimed, a little vexed.
“No, it doesn’t matter, it is true. Still, I should have liked to have heard it from you.”
“How many times have you asked this, Maria?” he said, between reproof and increasing vexation.
“Also you have asked me pretty often, Marco, if I ever loved my husband,” she retorted disdainfully.
At such a reminder the countenance of Marco Fiore became convulsed. Every slightly feminine trace disappeared from his rather pale and delicate face, and the firm and obstinate lines of his profile and chin became more accentuated, manly and rough. His lips trembled as he spoke.