“Oh, you won’t bore yourself there!” she replied, with a slightly bitter smile.
He remembered that in that room everything had remained untouched since he had married, that it was full of portraits, big and small, of Maria Guasco, with recollections of their dead dream, their dead love. He understood more than ever the depth of his wife’s thoughts and feelings; he realised her intense pain. So he tried again in pity and tenderness to make her speak, to make her weep.
“Vittoria, Vittoria!” he exclaimed in sad reproach, “you as usual are dissimulating and lying, and that makes you suffer and becomes unfair to me. I don’t want to be angry, and you should not suffer.”
“You are mistaken,” she replied coldly, “neither do I suffer nor need you be angry. My confessor has told me that the scope of matrimony is not love but children, that one must ask Heaven for children, and pray very much. I am going to pray.”
“Ah!” he said, suddenly becoming cold, “you are convinced that the scope of matrimony is not love?”
“Quite convinced,” she answered harshly.
“All the worse,” he exclaimed in a bad temper; “all the worse; and when did you decide to enter the convent for the novena?”
The question was direct and sharp. She hesitated to reply.
“When, Vittoria? Think and tell the truth.”