“Tell me why you have compassion on me? Why ever you pity me? Do I seem very ridiculous to you? You laugh at me in your mind, it is true, and in speaking to me pretend to have pity on me.”
Maria was silent, with an air of glacial detachment on her face, nor did she deign to reply to him. He sat on a chair near her, lowered his head, so that speaking very softly she could hear him well, and continued—
“It is you, you know it, who are making me ill or mad: you have no right to laugh at me. I have no right to accept your compassion. You are my enemy. I am sick of you, of your presence, of your contact. You have been my scourge. I have always thought everything of being calm and content, if not happy. You appeared in my life, and my peace has been destroyed and every joy.”
She leant her head against the back of the chair, on the little cushion in the form of a heart, kept her lips closed, and the eyes slightly contracted, her hands on the arms of the chair, like a person making a great effort internally to restrain herself, not to reply, not to rebel, to listen to the last word of what was thrown in her face.
“Yes, it is so,” he added fiercely, but subduedly; “no evil, no disaster, could devastate my existence worse than you. It would have been better if I had died on the day I knew you”—and he abandoned himself on the seat heavily, so that it cracked beneath his weight.
She opened her eyes, and looked at the disturbed brownish face without any emotion, and that great body on its chair, and asked quietly—
“Am I then, Emilio, as you say, an enemy of yours?”
He started, darted a contemptuous glance at her, and replied—
“Yes, an enemy of mine.”
“Does my presence exasperate you?”