“You were a magnificent lover, Maria!” he exclaimed, with infinite regret.
“A soul of love like you, Marco, a heart of love,” she replied, with the same regret.
“We should have died when our love was over, Maria,” Marco said.
“That is true; we ought to have died then. We missed a beautiful death, Marco,” replied Maria gloomily.
“Now it is too late to die, too late.”
“It is too late.”
They were silent, with all the weight of their cold, arid, useless lives, which was weighing down their souls, with all the enormous weight of a dead love, dead after having done all the good which had vanished with it, dead after all the evil which was still living.
“Are you going to stop at Lucerne?” asked Maria at last dreamily.
“A day or two; no more,” he replied, as if awakened from a dream.
“Where shall you go?”