“My dear old mother is not used to such surprises,” answered Gianluca.  “Of course I saw it, and knew that you did.”

“Yes—­but do you not think that I am quite right?” asked Veronica, her tone changing suddenly as she seemed to appeal to him for support—­she, who needed so little from anybody.

“Of course you are,” he answered promptly.

He felt unaccountably flattered and pleased by the mere fact of her asking him the question.  He felt instinctively that she had never asked any one’s opinion about her conduct, and that she really desired his approval.  She, on her part, was perhaps glad to speak freely at last about the position she had assumed.  If he had called her rash just then, she would not have answered him as she had answered Don Teodoro when he had used the same word.

“You see,” she said, “I am not like other women.  I was brought up in a convent, like most of them, but the rest of my life has been quite different.  Well—­you know, if any one does.  I used to write you all about what I meant to do while I was still living with Bianca, and you know that I have begun to carry out most of my ideas.  Yesterday afternoon, while you were resting, your father and mother and I had tea together, and she found out for the first time that I had no companion.  You should have seen her face!  And then, when I tried to explain, she got the impression at once that I meant to live here in a sort of amateur convent, surrounded by women.  I think she rather liked the idea.  It seemed to settle her disturbed prejudices a little.  Of course—­it must seem stranger to people who all live in the same way as she does.  Oh! how glad I am that we can talk about it, you and I!”

Again she laughed happily.  To Gianluca, as his eyes met hers, it seemed as though a great wave of the huge, exuberant life that filled the full-blossoming world that day had rolled up out of the broad valley to his feet and were lifting him and penetrating him and sweeping its hot tide through the ebb of his failing blood.

“Yes,” he answered her.  “To be able to talk at last—­at last, after so much waiting, that was only half talking.”

He sighed gently, and his hand stroked the grey shawl on his knees, smoothing it first in one way and then backwards in the other.  She watched him, and thought that she had never seen a hand so thin.

“We shall never go back to the old way, shall we?” he asked, before she spoke again.

“I hope not!” she answered.  “It was so absurd, sometimes.  Do you remember at Bianca’s house—­”

“The night before you left?  When I forgot my stick?”

“Yes; but before that.  You seemed to think that there was to be no more writing because I was coming here.”

“Of course—­that is, I supposed that it might make a difference—­”

“And then you asked me.  You should have seen your face!  I can remember it now.  It changed all at once.”