I make no reference to your marriage when I speak to you of my own.
Forgive me; I will not refer to the matter again." Corona felt again that strange thrill, half of pain, half of pleasure, and the lights of the theatre seemed moving before her uncertainly, as things look when one falls from a height.

Almost unconsciously she spoke, hardly knowing that she turned her head, and that her dark eyes rested upon Giovanni's pale face.
"And yet there must be some reason why you tell me that little, and why you do not tell me more." When she had spoken, she would have given all the world to have taken back her words.

It was too late.

Giovanni answered in a low thick voice that sounded as though he were choking, his face grew white, and his teeth seemed almost to chatter as though he were cold, but his eyes shone like black stars in the shadow of the box.
"There is every reason.

You are the woman I love." Corona did not move for several seconds, as though not comprehending what he had said.