"But why?"
He made a despairing but resolute movement.
"I am not free, Miss Ford."
"You have a wife?" and the Englishwoman's voice seemed slightly ironical.
"No, I haven't a wife; but I am even more tied and bound than if I had one."
"I don't know; I don't understand," she said.
"One sometimes leaves and deserts a wife. A lover is much more difficult. Sometimes it is impossible. It is impossible for me: I am a slave for ever."
He spoke harshly and brutally; but as if he were using such harshness and brutality against himself. In the light dimmed by the shades, it seemed as if a slight blush had spread over Miss Ford's pale face. The glaciality of her voice diminished: it seemed crossed by a subtle current of emotion, where also there was embarrassment, stubbornness, and pain. Miss May's questions were slower and more timid, more hesitating in some words, more broken with short silences, as if she had scarcely resumed the interrogation. Lucio's replies were precise, rough, gloomy, as if directed to a mysterious inquisitor of his soul, as if to his very own conscience.
"Isn't this person, this woman, free?"
"She is another's wife. Together we have betrayed a man's confidence."