“Yes, I think I shall stop there.”
“How long?”
“I don’t know; I know nothing, Marco,” she said, with a slightly pained expression.
“When will you return to Rome?” he asked, with a greater anxiety than he wished to show.
“I don’t know, I don’t know at all,” she replied monotonously.
“Still, still ... you have somebody there.”
“Somebody,” she repeated, underlining the word, “prefers my absence to my presence.”
“Really; is it really so?” Marco exclaimed.
“Yes,” she replied, with an expansive gesture of her hands.
“Have you left, Maria?”