“I had something to do,” he added vaguely, without offering further information; “don’t you like the flowers?”
“Yes, I like them,” she replied quickly, without any enthusiasm. “Thank you, Marco, they are beautiful flowers.” And she immersed her face in them.
He had thrown himself into a chair as if tired from a long walk or fastidiousness, as if he had forgotten that he had come to take her out. Vittoria herself, who had remained standing near the table, where she had placed the flowers, now sat down and placed her purse, and parasol there.
“What magnificent flowers Florence has,” added Marco, with an abstracted smile, “every time I return here I am seized with a madness to have such a lot of them, in fact, all if it were possible in my arms and my room.”
“You have been several times to Florence?” she asked coldly, almost imperiously.
“Yes,” he replied, without heeding either the question or its tone; “not all understand this country, and so not all can love it. It is a country of love and poesy,” he ended in saying, almost to himself, with a far-away expression of recollection.
Silent and serene Vittoria seemed to have heard nothing, and, as Marco was not getting up from his seat, nor expressing a wish to go out, she drew off her gloves slowly, stretched them one after the other, and placed them on the table beside the purse and the parasol.
“You have never seen it in the evening and at night, Vittoria, but I assure you it is a dreamland. Shall we go this evening, would you like to?”
“We will go,” she replied tranquilly, slightly distractedly, while she raised her long white hands to draw the two large pearl-headed pins from her hat.
“We must go if the evening is beautiful,” he continued, absorbed in his plan. “Is there a moon, Vittoria?”