'Now I'm certain of the exact opposite,' I answered, 'so much so that for a moment I almost thought of killing myself.'

As I said this I raised my eyes and looked at her. And then I realized that, the whole time, even while I had been talking about my story, I had been thinking of her. Little did it matter to me, now, that the story was bad; but I could not help feeling a sharp stab of pain when I noticed the traces of her affair with Antonio which were visible all over her. Her hair was disordered, its curls loosened, and I thought I could even see a few straws still sticking in it. The bunch of flowers was no longer there; it had presumably been left on the threshing-floor. Her mouth was pale and discoloured, but with a few smears of lipstick here and there which gave her whole face a battered and distorted look. Her dress, too, was crumpled; and at the height of the knee there was a fresh stain of earth, produced, apparently, by a fall.

I realized that she knew she was in this state and that she had acted deliberately in appearing as she was. Otherwise she could easily have gone first to her room and cleaned herself up, touched up her face, taken off her dress and put on a dressing-gown. At this thought I felt a fresh spasm of pain, being confronted, as it seemed, with an arrogant and ruthless hostility. She was saying, in the meantime: 'Kill yourself? Why, you're crazy. . and all for a story that didn't turn out right.'

I translated this, mentally, into: 'All for one moment of aberration. . because I couldn't resist a passing temptation.' And I said: 'For me this story was extremely important… I know I'm a failure now. . and I have the proof of it — in this manuscript'; and as I said it I made a brusque, almost involuntary gesture, pointing not in the direction of the desk upon which the manuscript lay, but towards her.

This time she understood (or perhaps she had already understood but had hoped to deceive me), and she lowered her eyes in a kind of confusion. The hand that she held in her lap moved downwards to her knee in order to hide the earthy stain. Bodily love is exhausting, and there are certain pretences which depend, for their efficacy, upon a physical impetus. At that moment, hampered by weariness of the senses and by her outward disorder, she must certainly have found it very difficult to recover herself and play her usual part as an affectionate wife. I feared some inept remark and said to myself that this time I would tell her the truth. Then I heard her voice, unexpectedly tremulous, asking: 'Why a failure? You didn't think of me, then?'

I dwelt for a moment upon the feeling of surprise that these words gave me. There was more in her question than mere audacity and slyness — admirable, possibly, but only as a flash of unwonted smartness; there was — or so it seemed to me — a touching sincerity. I asked, in turn: 'And what can you do for me? You can't possibly give me the talent that I lack.'

'No,' she said, in the sensible, ingenuous way she sometimes had, 'but I love you.'

She put out her hand towards me, seeking mine, and gazing at me all the time with those eyes of hers which seemed to become steadily clearer and more luminous as her feeling for me regained its strength and dispelled her recent excitement. I took her hand, kissed it, and fell on my knees in front of her. 'I love you too,' I said softly, 'and by now you ought to know it. . but I'm afraid that isn't enough to keep me alive.'

I kept my face pressed against those legs which, a short time before, I had seen, naked, executing the dance of desire on the threshing-floor. Meanwhile I was pondering over the meaning of her words. And this is what I gathered from them: 'I have done wrong, because I was led astray by desire. . but I love you, and that's the only thing that counts for me… I am sorry and I won't do it again.'

And so everything was as I had foreseen. But now I no longer felt inclined to reject that affection of hers, however insufficient it might be. I heard her saying: 'When these fits of despair come over you, you must try and think of me. . After all, we love each other, and that has some importance.'