Part 42 (1/2)
She sighed, and in the stillness that followed the little ivory fan rattled as she opened and shut it. To his ear, the tone in which she had spoken had rung false. If only he could have heard her voice speaking as it had once sounded, he must have been touched.
”Yes,” she continued. ”You loved me, or at least you made me think you did. I was young and I believed you. You do not even say it now. Perhaps because you know how hard it would be to make me believe you.”
”No. That is not the reason.”
She waited a moment, for it was not the answer she had expected.
”Angelo--” she began, and waited, but he said nothing, though he looked at her. ”It is not true, it cannot be true!” she said, suddenly turning her face away, for there was a bitter humiliation in it.
”It is much better to say it at once,” he said, with the supernaturally calm indifference which sometimes comes upon very sensitive people when they are irritated beyond endurance. ”I did love you, or I should not have married you. But I do not love you any longer. I am sorry. I wish I did.”
”And you dare to tell me so!” she cried, turning upon him suddenly.
A moment later she was leaning forward, covering her face with her hands, and speaking through them.
”You have the heart to tell me so, after all I have been to you--the devotion of years, the tenderness, the love no man ever had of any woman! Oh, G.o.d! It is too much!”
”It is said now. It is of no use to go back to a lie,” observed Reanda, with an indifference that would have seemed diabolical even to himself, had he believed her outbreak to be quite genuine. ”Of what use would it be to pretend again?”
”You admit that you have only pretended to love me?” She raised her flushed face and gleaming eyes.
”Of late--if you call it a pretence--”
”Oh, not that--not that! I have seen it--but at first. You did love me.
Say that, at least.”
”Certainly. Why should I have married you?”
”Yes--why? In spite of her, too--it is not to be believed.”
”In spite of her? Of whom? Are you out of your mind?”
Gloria laughed in a despairing sort of way.
”Do not tell me that Donna Francesca ever wished you to be married!” she said.
”She brought us together. You know it. It is the only thing I could ever reproach her with.”
”She made you marry me?”
”Made me? No! You are quite mad.”
He stamped his foot impatiently, and turned away to walk up and down again. His cigar had gone out, but he gnawed at it angrily. He was amazed at what he could still bear, but he was fast losing his head. The mad desire to strangle her tingled in his hands, and the light of the lamp danced when he looked at it.
”She has made you do so many things!” said Gloria.
Her tone had changed again, growing hard and scornful, when she spoke of Donna Francesca.
”What has she made me do that you should speak of her in that way?”
asked Reanda, angrily, re-crossing the room.