“Is everything over, then, between Marco and Maria?”
“Everything, for six or seven months.”
“Do you believe in this ending?”
“I? What does it matter what I believe?”
“Poor girl!”
“There! You see I was right to pity her.”
The music, spreading through the large central nave, still followed the bridal couple and the long procession of guests with its sonorous and precise notes. No word passed between them, and they contented themselves with a handshake to the good wishes which accompanied their passage; only at a certain point it seemed to Vittoria as if Marco’s face was troubled by a secret idea crossing his spirit. Suddenly her little white-gloved hand imperceptibly held his arm on which she was leaning, as she asked him with a tremor in her voice—
“Marco, what is the matter?”
“Nothing,” he replied, seized by his secret and obscure thought.
Wagner’s music seemed to exhale a powerful and settled joy which rocked the deep love of Elsa and Lohengrin, and spoke to them of a future of soft and constant passion, even until death. But Marco’s face became more clouded, as if his secret imaginings had mastered him.