Anna turned as white as the collar of her frock. It had come at last, the reproof she had so long been waiting for, and secretly dreading. He had put it in a single brief sentence. The woman who says too much is lost. Once upon a time, six months ago for instance, she would have endured such a reproof from no one, such a bitter reference to her past; she would have retorted hotly, especially if the speaker had been Cesare Dias. But now! So weakened was she by her illness and her sorrow, there was not a fibre in her that resented it; her blood slept in her veins; her heart contained nothing but penitence. "The woman who says too much is lost!" Cesare Dias was right.
"It is true," she said.
And yet, as she said it, a new grief was born within her, as if she had renounced some precious possession of her soul, broken some holy vow.
Cesare's face cleared. He had won a victory.
"Anna," he went on, "every time that you allow yourself to be carried away by sentimentalism, that you employ exaggerated expressions, that you indulge in emotional rhetoric, I assure you, you displease me greatly. How ridiculous if life were to be passed in saying of people, houses, landscapes, flowers, 'I adore them!' Don't you see what a convulsive, hysterical frame of mind that is? As if life were nothing but a smile, a tear, a kiss! Do you know to what this sort of thing inevitably leads? You know——"
"Spare me, I entreat you."
"I can't, dear. First you must agree with me that your attitude towards life, though a generous one if you like, is not a wise one, and that it leads to the gravest errors. Am I right?"
"You are right."
"You must agree with me that that sort of thing can only make ourselves and others miserable, whereas our duty is to be as happy and to make others as happy as we can. Everything else is rhetoric. Am I right?"