'It matters not'-and there was a sting. For if it mattered not, then she mattered not. Emilia placed a hand to her brow and held it there, pressing herself back against the wall nearest the door. Faith, she felt almost as if she could weep for sorrow. She could feel the weight upon his shoulders simply from the tone of his voice, and O, it burdened her heart so. But while she could sense his hurt, she also felt a hurt of her own… But why? She had been at the mercy of words far crueler than these for years. However, during those years she had forgotten Iago's embrace. His warmth. And the recollection of it that she had been treated to, however brief, now made her aware that something was lost…
Truly, affection softened women's hearts to pulp and made them malleable to temptation. It was just as Iago had said time and again; spiteful as he had been whenever she heard the chiding come from him, there was a grain of truth to the statement. Why, at this very second Emilia felt that she could surrender her soul to the Devil himself, if only she could return to that ethereal moment when Iago had kissed her, actually kissed her… In fact, the event had been both so short and so long ago that Emilia almost began to doubt that it had actually happened.
And did not sentiment make a woman selfish? Without doubt, there was something both grievous and ominous that haunted Iago, and yet all she could think of was herself and her own romantic desires! She felt a shame for it, and yet an indignance, for whatever troubled Iago so still did not warrant him to treat her rudely… And still she was being petty, for indeed, he had sounded far more sick at soul than he had sounded rude.
Nay, Emilia! she scolded herself, pressing her fingertips more firmly against her skull. Your husband is not a villain. A victim, rather! Pity the man! He is a victim of himself.
...And then, nay again. For who else had played Iago's victim more often than she, the perpetrator's ever-bending wife?
No. She could not think that. She was his wife; proud to be; she lived to make him happy-it was her calling. It was such wickedly ungrateful thoughts as those she had dared entertain that had caused her to be struck. And with this revelation, the clock struck seven and bells rang throughout the city… Night was approaching. Fate had merrily dragged her away from that blessed kiss in the blessed morning, and instead drove her nearer and nearer to the heavy place and the heavy hour in which her husband had cuffed her a night before. Emilia felt a chill settle in her bones that was more than just the nocturnal air, and she sank down against the wall in fearful remembrance, her own screams beginning to echo in her head again. She clutched at her head with both hands and tried to shake the awful visions out, tugging at her shawl until it was taut to her skin like a child swaddling herself in bedclothes for fear of some unseen monster.
But she must not be afraid. Eyes glossed over with unspilled tears, Emilia lifted her gaze to the torch on the wall before her, willing some of that brilliant fire into her heart. She would stay strong. Those torches burned all throughout the night without extinguishment: so would she.
"...I asked if I might enter, and you did not warrant me so," Emilia finally said, finding that her voice sounded unpleasantly hoarse, and wretchedly strained. "'Stay or go', said you, but not 'enter', and therefore I will stay; but cross this threshold I will not. I do not think you wish to see me, but truly I cannot bear to leave you." She searched for something she could say to convey the way that her heart ached for him, to communicate that she wanted nothing more than to fold his dispirited figure in her arms and banish his desolation hence, but she found nothing, and she instead allowed the space between them to be permeated with dark silence.