This time a sense of irony against himself and his own mediocrity escaped from his indifference.
"Poor Vittorio!" said Lucio, pressing his hand across the table, "tell me everything. You can tell me everything, I can understand."
"Oh, mine isn't such an interesting story!" exclaimed Vittorio, with a pale smile of irony; "if you like, it is rather a stupid story. I was such a fool in the Engadine! I went there to find a girl, neither too beautiful nor too ugly, and not very rich, who could drag my mother and myself out of our difficulties; I went with a definite programme, a vulgar but definite programme, unromantic but definite, that of a dowry-hunter. Instead of looking for a mediocre girl, with a dowry of six or seven hundred thousand lire, like a child, like an idiot, I make straight for Mabel Clarke, who has fifty millions. I put forward my candidature as a flirt to good purpose, and conquered all rivals. Fool, thrice a fool that I was! Instead of keeping my presence of mind, and all my wits, I fall in love with her because she is beautiful, fresh, young, new, and of another race; because we were free, and left free, as is the American custom, as you know quite well, so that at last the girl of fifty millions falls in love with me."
"She did love you, then?"
"Yes, she loved me in her way," answered Vittorio, shortly.
"She suffered through you."
"She suffered less intensely, but longer, perhaps. Even in this she beat me, Lucio! What a common story, is it not? How could I have thought that the world and my destiny would have permitted me to marry Mabel Clarke with her fifty millions, to be the son-in-law of John Clarke, who, at his death, would have left other two hundred millions? I? I? And why? Who was I, more than another, of my country or another, of my set or another, who was I to reach to such power? I was neither a true pleasure-seeker, nor properly vicious, nor a cynic. Seriously, I was nothing but a—calculator. I was nothing serious, my friend. If I had been in earnest as a calculator I should not have fallen in love with Mabel Clarke. What a mistake, or rather, what a gaucherie!"
"You can't forget her, Vittorio," whispered Lucio, looking at him with tender eyes.
"You are wrong. I forget her more and more. Besides, have I not married Livia?"
"Why did you make that marriage?"