“Corona,” he said, “I love you.”  His wife looked up with a gentle smile, and in her determination to be loyal to him she almost forgot that other man who had said those words but two hours before, so differently.

“Yes,” he said, with a sigh, “you have heard it before—­it is not new to you.  I think you believe it.  You are good, but you do not love me—­no, do not interrupt me, my dear; I know what you would say.  How should you love me?  I am an old man—­very old, older than my years.”  Again he sighed, more bitterly, as he confessed what he had never owned before.  The Duchessa was too much astonished to answer him.

“Corona,” he said again, “I shall not live much longer.”

“Ah, do not speak like that,” she cried suddenly.  “I trust and pray that you have yet many years to live.”  Her husband looked keenly at her.

“You are so good,” he answered, “that you are really capable of uttering such a prayer, absurd as it would seem.”

“Why absurd?  It is unkind of you to say it—­”

“No, my dear; I know the world very well.  That is all.  I suppose it is impossible for me to make you understand how I love you.  It must seem incredible to you, in the magnificence of your strength and beautiful youth, that a man like me—­an artificial man”—­he laughed scornfully—­“a creature of paint and dye—­let me be honest—­a creature with a wig, should be capable of a mad passion.  And yet, Corona,” he added, his thin cracked voice trembling with a real emotion, “I do love you—­very dearly.  There are two things that make my life bitter:  the regret that I did not meet you, that you were not born, when I was young; and worse than that, the knowledge that I must leave you very soon—­I, the exhausted dandy, the shadow of what I was, tottering to my grave in a last vain effort to be young for your sake—­for your sake, Corona dear.  Ah, it is contemptible!” he almost moaned.

Corona hid her eyes in her hand.  She was taken off her guard by his strange speech.

“Oh, do not speak like that—­do not!” she cried.  “You make me very unhappy.  Do I reproach you?  Do I ever make you feel that you are—­older than I?  I will lead a new life; you shall never think of it again.  You are too kind—­too good for me.”

“No one ever said I was too good before,” replied the old man with a shade of sadness.  “I am glad the one person who finds me good, should be the only one for whose sake I ever cultivated goodness.  I could have been different, Corona, if I had had you for my wife for thirty years, instead of five.  But it is too late now.  Before long I shall be dead, and you will be free.”

“What makes you say such things to me?” asked Corona.  “Can you think I am so vile, so ungrateful, so unloving, as to wish your death?”

“Not unloving; no, my dear child.  But not loving, either.  I do not ask impossibilities.  You will mourn for me a while—­my poor soul will rest in peace if you feel one moment of real regret for me, for your old husband, before you take another.  Do not cry, Corona, dearest; it is the way of the world.  We waste our youth in scoffing at reality, and in the unrealness of our old age the present no longer avails us much.  You know me, perhaps you despise me.  You would not have scorned me when I was young—­oh, how young I was! how strong and vain of my youth, thirty years ago!”