She rose in a fine anger, and stood quivering there, magnificently tall, and Juno, I imagined, must have looked to the poets as she looked then to me.
“This is too much!” she cried.
“It is, madam,” he snapped. “I agree with you.” She considered him with eyes that held a loathing and contempt unutterable. Then she looked at me, and shrugged her shoulders as who would say: “You see how I am used!” Lastly she turned, and took her way across the lawn towards the house.
There was a little silence between us after she had gone. I was on fire with indignation, and yet I could think of no words in which I might express it, realizing how utterly I lacked the right to be angry with a husband for the manner in which he chose to treat his wife.
At last, pondering me very gravely, he spoke.
“It were best you read no more with Madonna Giuliana,” he said slowly. “Her tastes are not the tastes that become a man who is about to enter holy orders.” He closed the book, which hitherto he had held open; closed it with an angry snap, and held it out to me.
“Restore it to its shelf,” he bade me.
I took it, and quite submissively I went to do his bidding. But to gain the library I had to pass the door of Giuliana's room. It stood open, and Giuliana herself in the doorway. We looked at each other, and seeing her so sorrowful, with tears in her great dark eyes, I stepped forward to speak, to utter something of the deep sympathy that stirred me.
She stretched forth a hand to me. I took it and held it tight, looking up into her eyes.
“Dear Agostino!” she murmured in gratitude for my sympathy; and I, distraught, inflamed by tone and look, answered by uttering her name for the first time.