In the first shock of knowing that Gianluca was to die, she felt as though she had lost a part of him already, and something she dearly valued seemed to go out of her life.  Her instinct was not to go to him and see him while she could, but to look forward to the blankness that would be before her when he should be gone.  Something of him was an integral part of her life.  But there was something of him for which she felt that she hardly cared at all.

She was probably selfish in the common sense of that ill-used word.  It is generally applied to persons who do not love those that love them, but are glad of their existence, as it were, for the sake of something they receive and perhaps return—­as Veronica did.  But she did not ask herself questions, for she had never had the smallest inclination to analysis or introspection.  It was as clear to her as ever that she did not love Gianluca in the least, but that she should find it hard to be happy without him.  She had been nearer to loving poor Bosio than Gianluca, though the truth was that she had never loved any one yet.

But she pitied Gianluca with all her heart.  That was the most she could do for that part of him which was nothing to her, and her face grew very sad as she thought of what he might be suffering, and of how hard it must be to die so young, with all the world before one.  She could not imagine herself as ever dying.

She sat still a long time and tried to think of what she should do.  But her thoughts wandered, and presently she found that she was asking herself whether it were her destiny to be fatal to those who loved her.  But the mere idea of fatality displeased her as something which could oppose her, and perhaps defy her.  After all, Gianluca might not die.  She looked over Taquisara’s letter again.

He was a man who meant what he said, and he wrote in earnest.  There was something in him that appealed to her, as like to like.  He had been rude and had spoken almost insolently, and even now he dared to write that he meant what he had said and only regretted the words he had used.  For them, indeed, his apology was sufficient—­for the rest, she was undecided.  She went on to what referred to Gianluca, and her face grew grave and sad again.  It must be true.

She laid the letter in the drawer where she kept Gianluca’s, but in a separate corner, by itself.  Then she took up her pen to write to Gianluca, intending to take up the daily written conversation at the point where she had last broken off, on the previous evening.  With an effort, she wrote a few words, and then stopped short and leaned back in her chair, staring at the tapestry.  It was a grim farce to write about her streets and her houses and her charities to a man who was dying—­and who loved her.  Yet she could not speak of his illness without letting him know that Taquisara had informed her of it.  She tried to go on, and stopped again.  Poor Gianluca—­he was so young!  All at once her pity overflowed unexpectedly, and she felt the tears in her eyes and on her cheeks.  She brushed them away, and left her letter unfinished.