Veronica was happy too.  There is a sort of exhilaration and daily surprise in the first use of real power in any degree, and she enjoyed her own sensations to the fullest extent.  When she was alone, she wrote about them to Gianluca, giving him what was almost a daily chronicle of her new life, and waiting anxiously for the answers to her letters which came with almost perfect regularity for some time after her own arrival at Muro.

They pleased her, too, though the note of sadness was more accentuated in them, as time went on and spring ran into summer.  He had hoped, perhaps, that she might tire of her solitude and come down to Naples, if only for a few days; or at least, that something might happen to break what promised to be a long separation.  He longed for a sight of her, and said so now and then, for letter-writing could not fill up the aching emptiness she had left in his already empty life.  He had not her occupations and interests to absorb his days and make each hour seem too short, and, moreover, he loved her, whereas she was not at all in love with him.

Then, a little later, there was a tone of complaint in what he wrote, which suddenly irritated her.  He told her that his life was dreary and tiresome, and that the people about him did not understand him.  She answered that he should occupy himself, that he should find something to do and do it, and that she herself never had time enough in the day for all she undertook.  It was the sort of letter which a very young woman will sometimes write to a man whose existence she does not understand, a little patronizing in tone and superior with the self-assurance of successful and unfeeling youth.  She even pointed out to him that there were several things which he did not know, but which he might learn if he chose, all of which was undoubtedly true, though it was not at all what he wanted.  For him, however, the whole letter was redeemed by a chance phrase at the end of it.  She carelessly wrote that she wished he were at Muro to see what she had done in a short time.  He knew that the words meant nothing, but he lived on them for a time, because she had written them to him.  His next letter was more cheerful.  He repeated her own words, as though wishing her to see how much he valued them, saying that he wished indeed that he were at Muro, to see what she had accomplished.  To some extent, he added, the fulfilment of the wish only depended on herself, for in the following week he was going with his father and mother and all the family to spend a month in a place they had not far from Avellino, and that, as she knew, was not at an impossible distance from Muro.  But of course he could not intrude alone upon her solitude.

When she next wrote, Veronica made no reference to this hint of his.  The man was not the same person to her as the correspondent, and she very much preferred exchanging letters with him to any conversation.  She did not forget what he had said, however, and when she supposed that the Della Spina family had gone to the country she addressed her letters to him near Avellino.  He had not yet gone, however, and he soon wrote from Naples complaining that he had no news from her.