She offered her hand. He took it and kissed it, holding it a little in his own. In spite of his worldly composure, in spite of his mask of good form, he showed that he was moved.
“Can’t you really manage, Donna Maria, to consider me a man worthy of some attention and curiosity?” he asked, with some anxiety.
“Oh, I know you well!” she replied, shaking her head.
“You could be wrong.”
“No, I can’t be wrong. For several years you have been attempting the conquest of my—attention—let us call it attention—a question of self-love. You have possessed other women more beautiful, more elegant than I. You are accustomed to succeed, so you are irritated and sad because you can’t with me. You have begun to suffer because you can’t succeed with me, and so you have got as far as believing that you are really in love.”
“Alas, it is no supposition!” he replied melancholily, but with an accent of truth.
“Let us not speak of love,” she declared; “I oughtn’t to listen any more to such talk. My greedy ears are satiated with it, they are tired of it, and have become deaf to it for ever and ever.”
“Nevertheless, some one loves you here, Donna Maria.”
“Whoever?”
“Emilio!”