"But you who know and love me? You should see that I love and adore you only for yourself?"
"Even love wanes later, and not so very much later," she replied thoughtfully. "Your Italian love is so ardent and flattering; it sets very soon. Afterwards ... I should believe people; I should believe that you had married me for my money."
"Afterwards! I swear to you that there should be no afterwards for me."
"Swear not. All American women who have married Europeans have been disillusioned and betrayed."
"Others! Others!"
"They were also gentlemen, dear, who perhaps were in good faith. It is useless, we are too different; we have other souls and temperaments. We have no luck with you Europeans, we poor, rich American women."
Obstinately she shook her head; then she resumed slowly.
"Where should we live? A part of the time in my country, in America. There they would deem you a dowry-hunter; it would be, it will be, impossible to make them believe the contrary. You would feel yourself despised. Then the life is so different, in an atmosphere of distrust the life would seem to you eccentric, grotesque, unbearable; and if I forced you to stay there you would end by hating me."
"But with us? In this beautiful land?"