“Ah!” she interrupted; and she would have said more but kept silent, becoming absorbed and gloomy.
“You already know that your husband will not change his behaviour to you; your disagreement can’t help becoming intenser and deeper every day.”
She assented with a nod, becoming gloomier.
“You already know, you will have been told, that Marco Fiore has become enamoured of an actress, an actress with red hair, Gemma Dombrowska, and that perhaps he will go off with her as with you ... as with you.”
Bitterness, sarcasm, anger vibrate in every word of Gianni Provana as he follows the woman, persuading and persecuting her.
She bent her head in assent, because she knew.
“You see quite well!” he exclaimed in a hissing voice, “that there is nothing else for you in life, but to become my lover.”
A sense of fatality seemed to weigh on the woman’s life, which oppressed and squashed her. Evening had fallen in the avenues and it seemed like night. All the ladies who had still remained in the wooded lawns and avenues covered themselves with their cloaks and hurried their steps, accompanied by their cavaliers.
Farewells are exchanged, light laughter, and small cries, while the waiters denude the last tables, and the great stall of the fragolata is covered with squashed strawberries and withered leaves. Every one hurries to the gate in a kind of flight, leaving the wood behind filled with night, fearful in its solitude, where it seemed to be peopled with unknown phantoms.
Near the great gate Flaminia Colonna, Maria Guasco and Gianni Provana meet face to face Donna Vittoria Fiore, accompanied by her sister Beatrice. Marco Fiore’s wife had been at the fragolata all the afternoon, but as usual had kept herself in some far-off corner in the shadow of her sister, and had not approached the patronesses’ stall, nor had she participated at any of the little strawberry tables. She was there, at the threshold of Villa Borghese, behind her sister, who had advanced to call the carriage of Casa Fiore. She was there, with her little white closed face and eyelids lowered over eyes too clear and limpid, with the lower half of her face hidden in the feathers of her white boa. But at a certain moment her eyes are raised and meet those of Maria Guasco, pregnant with sadness and pride. Vittoria’s glance flashed as never before in unspeakable hate. Maria Guasco smiled and laughed, as bending towards Gianni Provana she said—