“I suppose what is, Provana; that it may please you hugely to be the lover of your best friend’s wife, that it may please you to preserve a friendship with the husband and love the wife; that you have a horror of scandal, of noise, of open and undeniable betrayal; that the miserable and nauseating betrayal of every day pleases you with all its lies and transactions; that for a long time you have known that you wished to do this to Emilio and to me; that no one upset your plan more than he whom you know—and in fact that you have begun to hope again in its success.”
“Every one is allowed to hope for what he ardently desires,” replied Gianni ambiguously.
“I shall only have had one love in my life,” she said, in a clear low voice, “and only one lover. Good-bye, Provana.”
The carriage had driven round the circle of the courtyard of the Guasco Palazzo, in via de’Prefetti, and stopped before the peristyle. Bowing deeply Gianni Provana took his leave, while Maria, preceded by the servants, mounted the stairs very slowly. An inexorable agitation pressed deeply on the soul of the woman who, after the intense love rhapsody in which she had thrown all that was good and bad in her existence as upon a pyre, was retracing her steps and invoking the pardon of him whom she had fatally and unjustly injured. Ah, she would never have returned to the honest, faithful man unless she had seen the magnificent pyre of her passion extinguished, and her life rendered mute and deserted by love!
She had preferred to take time to calm her sorrow, to mature in her conscience the act of remission and humility she had come to accomplish. She had passed five months away from Rome in a villa near Florence, without asking or giving news, and her heart and soul were immersed in a great contrition. They had felt all the weight of the evil done to others, of suffering inflicted undeservedly on the innocent. The sublime idea of reparation had become in Maria so lofty and irrevocable that, at the end of her exile, she was asking to touch the limit of every personal sacrifice, if only to console, heal, and make Emilio Guasco happy again.
In the solitude which she had imposed on herself, in which she had prepared herself for the great work—the greatest and most beautiful work the human soul can accomplish—of giving comfort and happiness, the figure of Emilio Guasco, by his sufferings and the dignity with which he had borne them, and the magnanimity with which he had recalled her to himself, stretching his arms to her in pardon, seemed greater than it had ever been. From the distance Emilio’s love for her seemed immeasurable, since it had resisted betrayal, abandonment, and dishonour. It seemed a different love to her—superior, immovable, eternal, a love which she had never experienced, and, in fact, she felt herself unworthy of having inspired. Contrition was breaking, pulverising, volatilising Maria Guasco’s pride, that secret strength, sin, and virtue of her life.
Slowly she reached the head of the stairs, her heart beating more quickly, as she noticed again the well-known place where she had lived, where again she had to see the well-known face and hear again the familiar voice. She realised that she was holding in her convulsed hand two existences.
Maria had no other feeling as she placed her feet on the threshold of what had been her home, and was to become so again, except that of the humility of the repentant sinner. All her being was humility. She was begging pardon for the sin committed, and for the pardon was offering in exchange the dedication of a soul, the dedication of a life.
In the large ante-room, with its dark-carved panels, the two servants left their mistress, and retired to the other side of the living rooms. Once alone her trembling increased, and she seemed to be falling. Where, then, was Emilio, her husband and judge, her husband and her victim, who had not had the strength to meet her at the station, whom at any rate she had expected to find at the threshold? With an effort of will she kept her step firm, and crossed the drawing-room and the little drawing-room. Both rooms were deserted, and so was her bright boudoir. Where was Emilio? A singular thought crossed her brain, which she rejected as soon as she had accepted it, as she perceived him through the open door of his study, standing by his large writing-table holding in his hand, but not reading, a newspaper. The room was less illuminated than the others, and the lamps were shaded in green, but if it had been inundated with the light of the sun Maria would have noticed nothing, so veiled were her eyes and scattered her senses. However, she advanced towards him, where he was waiting silently for the proper word from her. In spite of her horrible trembling, she turned to him contritely with the sincerest repentance; bending her head and stretching out her hands to him. With a very white face, she exclaimed in unspeakable humility—
“Emilio, I ask your pardon.”