“I shall never re-enter Rome.”
“Are you in exile, then?”
“It is exile without any time limit.”
“And your mother?”
“I shall see her at Spello where Vittoria does not go, and she will come to Florence. It is very sad, but there it is.”
“And you?”
“If I were poor I should set to work to do something with my faculties and time. Unfortunately I am not even poor. A dissolute life, since I have loved you, fills me with horror.”
“We are two miserables, Marco,” she concluded gloomily; “far away in Rome there are two others more miserable than we are, and neither you nor I can do anything for them.”
“Neither you nor I can do anything for them,” he replied, like a dull echo.
“No one can do anything for any one,” said Maria desperately.