“Perhaps I am not mistaken. All other wives feel a real need of their homes; you, it seems, scarcely experience this need.”
“It isn’t true; it isn’t true,” she stammered.
“Do me the honour not to take me for an idiot,” he retorted quickly; “Casa Fiore doesn’t seem good enough for your presence!”
“Oh, Marco!” she protested, with a voice full of tears.
“Rome seems a capital too small for you? The place where your mother and my mother live seems mean and empty to you, perhaps?”
“Marco! Marco!” she begged.
But her husband was now exasperated. The first angry, violent conjugal dispute had broken out, and she tried in vain to calm it. Trembling prevented her from pronouncing a word. She felt suffocated.
“Can you deny it?” he replied, in a voice where anger and irony hissed. “Do you deny that you don’t share my consolation in returning to Rome?”
Without speaking she clasped her hands as if to implore him to torture her no more.
“I am sorry to tell you, dear Vittoria,” he continued implacably, “that sometimes you lie.”