"Here I should suffer, dear Vittorio. To all you Italian men and women I should always be the American woman who had made a bargain, who had given her dollars and bought a title. Principessa di Santalena! Donna Mabel Lante della Scala! What a lot of people would laugh on hearing the name, and would hide their smiles, because I should have a palace and a park, and would give dinners and garden-parties; but behind my back, what sneers and criticisms, and evil speaking! At your first betrayal how all would curse you in my country, how all would say you were right in yours, and all this because I, poor little woman, have a dowry of fifty millions, and you fifteen hundred lire a month, on which your mother must live."
She ceased, as if breathless from having made too long a speech, she who was accustomed to short, clear phrases, like all her race.
"You never thought of this in the Engadine," he interrupted.
"No, I never thought of it. Up there everything was so beautiful and simple! Love was so pure and life so easy!"
"Ah, how could you have forgotten that time, Mabel?"
"I haven't forgotten it. Afterwards I saw that nothing is simple, nothing easy—neither life, nor love, nor happiness—nothing, when there is this terrible, powerful thing, money."
"What, then, do you want from me? What have you come to seek from me?" he asked, half angrily and half sadly.
"For you to give me a proof of what you are by your birth, by your past, by your character; for you to free me from the promise of engagement, frankly and spontaneously."
"Oh, I couldn't do otherwise," he said, with a pale, ironical smile.