[SCENA / RECITATIVO ACCOMPAGNATO | restrained, aristocratic, incredulous] Once each year? And always she? You met her quietly, year after year, and thought this detail too small to name? No letter. No room. No kiss. How fortunate. How very clean. I knew the club accounts, the cellar inventory, the gardener’s schedule, your mother’s opinions on nearly everyone alive— but this, apparently, was private. How efficient. And so, because no rule was broken, nothing was broken. Is that the argument? [CANTABILE | broad legato | genuinely wounded, no sarcasm] Nothing improper, nothing betrayed, nothing a decent man need be ashamed of. Nothing improper, nothing concealed— and yet there stood a life beside mine, carefully tended, carefully sealed. She knew your first ambitions. She knew your younger face. She knew the man before the world had taught him how to take his place. I had the years. I had the name. I had the house, the dinners, the ring. But she had one small room inside your memory where I had never been. [TEMPO DI MEZZO | sudden stillness] Forty years. Not once. Not twice. Forty. Years. And this was luncheon? [CABALETTA | brilliant, controlled fury | sarcasm increasingly lethal] Nothing improper! Call it luncheon. Call it friendship. Call it manners, if you please. Nothing improper! A civilized hour. A respectable table. A perfectly respectable secret with the woman you nearly chose before me. Nothing improper! No confession. No scandal. No reason whatsoever to trouble the wife. How thoughtful. What restraint! What discretion! What marvelous taste! To preserve a former future so politely for the rest of your life. Nothing improper! No, Richard— I quite understand. It was only lunch. For forty years. [CODA | grand cadence prepared, then orchestra cuts] Dinner is at seven. I assume you still remember.
