The world takes us for man and wife and we are not?"
"Release you? Don't I grant you as much freedom as I can? And are you
not still the father of my children? The head of the house?"
"I have a wife, Lucia, who is really my wife and whom I want to make my
wife before the world. I ask you whether you will give me the
opportunity to do this by dissolving our marriage."
Then her Italian temperament revealed itself in all its intensity. She
spoke with rage and animosity upon her face, and with vehement and
dramatic gestures, as I had never seen her before.
"Give you opportunity? Opportunity to break what God cannot break? Are
you crazy, Vico? How many women would do what I did - pardon and bear
the deadly offence? Would you now cast me off still further and humble
me yet more? Would you have me give up my rights for an ordinary
bourgeois woman, whom another would long ago have poisoned? Should I
yet abet her and you in the wrong you are doing me and the disgrace you
are bringing upon me and upon my children? - Go, Vico, and don't
provoke me, for I still love you and should be capable of murdering
you.
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