'
The words trembled on her lips; her eyes were full of tears.
'Oh, if only I need not leave you, if I could stay here always!'
Her heart was so full that it lent an indefinable sadness to her words.
'When I think that you can never know the whole extent of my love! That
I can never know yours! Do you love me? Tell me, say it a hundred, a
thousand times--always--you love me?'
'As if you did not know!'
'No, I do not know.'
She uttered the words in so low a tone that Andrea hardly caught them.
'Maria!'
She silently laid her head on Andrea's breast, waiting for him to speak,
as if listening to his heart.
He regarded that hapless head, weighed down by the burden of a sad
foreboding; he felt the light pressure of that noble, mournful brow upon
his breast, which was hardened by falsehood, encased in duplicity as in
a cuirass of steel. He was stirred by genuine emotion; a sense of human
pity for this most human suffering gripped him by the throat. And yet
this agitation of soul resolved itself into lying words and lent a
quiver of seeming sincerity to his voice.
'You do not know!--Your voice was so low that it died away upon your
lips; at the bottom of your heart something protested against your
words; all, all the memories of our love rose up and protested against
them. Oh! _you do not know_ that I love you!--'
She remained leaning against him, listening, trembling, recognising or
fancying that she recognised in his moving voice the accents of true
passion, the accents that intoxicated her and that she supposed were
inimitable.
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