“What do you want to know from me?”
“If Gianni Provana’s suit pleases you, if it has ever pleased you, if it will ever please you?” he said coldly and cuttingly, drawing near to her, and looking at her with eyes full of anger.
She stepped back a little, certainly not in fright, but to measure this new sentiment of Emilio’s.
“What does it matter to you?” she asked slowly.
“It matters to me,” he replied, without changing either his accent or the expression of his face.
“Gianni Provana’s suit has never pleased me, does not please me, and never will please me.”
She pronounced the words slowly, letting them fall one by one, fixing her husband with her eyes. She saw his face change distinctly, the anger vanish which had transfigured him, and she heard his voice assume a lower tone, veiled with unfamiliar emotion.
“Why?” he asked; “why?”
“Because I despise him,” she concluded honestly, retiring again into a definite silence, as if she had nothing else to say, or wished to say, on that subject.
“I beg your pardon, Maria,” he whispered, drawing near her, his voice saddened and a little disturbed.