He got up quickly.
“Are you going?” she asked, rather surprised.
“For what am I to remain here? To hear this from you? The worst you could have told me you have told.”
The face of the worldling and pleasure-lover expressed at that moment true suffering.
She looked at him.
“Why are you obstinate, Provana,” she asked coldly and courteously, “in bothering about me, of what I think, of what I say, of what I do?”
“Because I am a fool,” he confessed, taking his monocle out of its orbit and looking at her, a familiar trick of his.
“You are not a fool,” she replied, with a little smile; “you are eagerly anxious to get something that seems necessary to you, which would instead be useless and dangerous to you, and which, through your good fortune, you will never obtain.”
“Everything has been said,” he murmured, offering her his hand, “good-night, Donna Maria.”
“Good-night, Provana.”