“No; I know it’s only your way.”
“It’s my temperament; sometimes the blood goes to my head, and mad ideas get into it. Listen, let me say all. If I were your husband, I should be madly jealous, jealous to insanity. I feel that I should beat you, strangle you....”
Lucia closed her eyes, inebriated.
“And listen, listen,” he gasped; “I want to tell you what I have never dared to say to you until now ... to ask your pardon for that evening ... when I behaved like a brute.... Have you forgiven me?” Thrilling with the mere thought of the scene he had evoked, his entreaty was as passionate as the emotion caused by memory.
“Yes,” she replied, a barely audible “yes,” that came after some hesitation.
“You do really forgive me?”
“I forgive you. Do not let us talk about it.”
“One word more. Did you say anything to....”
“To whom?”
“... to Alberto?”