“None, Marco,” continued Maria, lowering her eyelids to hide the expression of her eyes, “and so it ought to be.”
“I shall never forget you, you who have been all my ardour and sweetness,” he added, still desolately.
“You ought not to forget me, dear love of mine, you ought not to.”
“Well then, Maria, why is everything ended?”
“For this reason,” she replied enigmatically.
“I want to love you all my life passionately.”
“It isn’t possible, it isn’t possible. Love doesn’t last for life. Life is so long, love is so short.”
“Oh, what sadness, Maria! what sadness! I shall never console myself.”
“I too shall never console myself, Marco, never.”
Again they were silent, desperate and bowed down beneath their fate, as if separated by an iron wall and divided in soul, incapable of passing over or breaking down that wall. They felt as well the weight of time which was falling on their heads, and the mortal tedium which was enveloping them in that so far profitless conversation.