Donna Micaela sits and looks at him; her eyes beg and implore more and more eagerly. Gaetano seems to be glad and happy to see her, but why can he not say what he has to say? “Have you been on the Etna railway?” she asks. “Yes,” he answers, and begins quite unconstrainedly to speak of the beauty and usefulness of the road. He knows nothing of how it came to be. Gaetano is saying to himself that he is a brute. Why does he not speak the words for which she is longing? But why is she sitting there so humbly? Why does she show that he needs only to stretch out his hand and take her? He is desperately, stormily happy to be near her, but he feels so sure of her, so certain. It is so amusing to torture her. The people of Diamante are still standing outside in the street, and they all feel as great a happiness as if they had given away a daughter in marriage. They have been patient till now in order to give Gaetano time to declare himself. But now it surely must be accomplished. And they begin to shout:-- “Long live Gaetano! long live Micaela!” Donna Micaela looks up with inexpressible dismay. He surely must understand that she has nothing to do with it. She goes out to the gallery and sends Luca down with the request that they will be silent. When she comes back, Gaetano has risen. He offers her his hand; he wishes to go. Donna Micaela puts out her hand almost without knowing what she is doing. But then she draws it back; “No, no,” she says. He wishes to go, and who knows whether he will come again on the morrow. She has not been able to talk to him; she has not been able to say a word to him of all that she wished to say. Surely there was no need for them to be like ordinary lovers. That man had given her life all its life for many years. Whether he spoke to her of love or not was of no importance; yet she wishes to tell him what he has been to her. And now, just now. One has to make the most of one’s opportunities when Gaetano is in question. She dares not let him go. “You must not go yet,” she says. “I have something to say to you.” She draws forward a chair for him; she herself places herself a little behind him. His eyes are too gay to-night, they trouble her. Then she begins to speak. She lays before him the great, hidden treasures of her life. They were all the words he had said to her and all the dreams he had set her to dreaming. She had not lost one. She had collected and saved them up. They had been the only richness in her poor life. In the beginning she speaks fast, as if repeating a lesson. She is afraid of him; she does not know whether he likes her to speak. At last she dares to look at him. He is serious now, no longer malicious. He sits still and listens as if he would not lose a syllable. Just now his face was sickly and ashen, but now it suddenly changes. His face begins to shine as though transfigured.