“To me, yes; though the Gothard route is the more beautiful.”
“Let us take the other then,” she added.
“Would you always be a spirit of contradiction, Vittorietta? Why do you prefer the less beautiful?”
She shrugged her shoulders.
He frowned. Sometimes her cold replies surprised him, freezing all the gentle concern he had in seeing her content and happy. When that pleasant face grew fixed and the lips closed, she seemed like a little unopened flower which no ray of the sun could open, and he experienced a sense of delusion and melancholy. The control he exerted over himself was very great. To be so abundantly affectionate he required so much moral and sentimental effort, and she understood nothing of it. With a word or a gesture she cut off all his tender good-will.
But to accomplish his sentimental existence of a mission, of a duty which should fill the immense empty place of his dead love, was not Marco bound to Vittoria’s good and happiness? Was it not his concern, little by little, by daily sympathy and affection, by loving tenderness, to heal the heart wounded by a long and cruel abandonment and betrayal? Should he not make her forget all she had suffered for him? And if that jealous and offended soul was not completely reassured, if that disdainful soul martyred by waiting did not expand and tremble with joy, she was right perhaps. He must be patient and sweet with her, as with an invalid who has scarcely reached convalescence, and has still the horror of the disease in the mind.
“Now, little Vittoria, melt all the ice which surrounds your soul, have a desire and a will, my lady,” he resumed, in the half-mocking, half-affectionate tone he liked to take with her. The poor cold soul who only felt the affection of courteous words and the brilliant glance of the clear eyes, asked—
“What do you wish, then, Marco?”
“That you express an idea, expound a plan for the continuance of our journey. Don’t you know; can’t you decide? I will help you, little Vittoria. Do you wish to go to Paris?”
“Yes.”