On that first day, Veronica had been on the point of speaking very plainly to Gianluca, intending to tell him once again that he must not be deceived, that she should never marry him, and indeed had no intention of ever marrying at all.  But she had been interrupted by the coming of the Duchessa; and, as she had not spoken at the first opportunity, she did not purposely create another at once.  She was not skilful in such situations.  When her directness came into conflict with her sense of delicacy, one or the other gave way; for in serious matters she instinctively hated complicated methods, and though she could be hard and perhaps unnecessarily cruel, yet she would at any time rather be over-kind than take refuge in the compromises of what most people call tact.  The weaknesses of the strong are like the crevasses in a glacier; they have a general direction, but it is impossible to know certainly beforehand the precise depth or importance of any one of them, nor how far it may lead.  The little strengths of weak people are like jagged rocks jutting up in shifting sands and changing tide, the more dangerous to the unwary because they are few and unexpected, and no one can tell where they lie, just below the surface.  Many a brave enterprise has gone to pieces upon the stupid, unforeseen obstinacy of a despised weakling.

Veronica, like other people, even the very strongest, had weak points, or moments when some points of her character were weak, which comes to the same thing in result.  She dreaded to hurt Gianluca, and since the occasion had passed when she might have made everything clear, and would have done so, she found it hard to decide how to act.

Taquisara had told her that the man was dying.  If that were true, it could make no difference, whether he believed that she would marry him or not.  The thought of his death was terribly painful, and she thrust it from her; for she was not heartless, and in the days that followed their conversation on the balcony, her affection grew to be as real and deep as it could possibly have been for a most dearly loved brother.  For her, there had been none of those ties in which such affections live and grow and become parts of life itself.  Fatherless, motherless, without brother, or sisters, the girl had grown up not knowing what she had to give, and giving scarcely anything at all of what was best in her.  She was reticent and proud, and could never be attached to many people.  Bianca had been her friend, in a way, but Bianca’s life was mysterious to her, and Pietro Ghisleri had come between the two.

And now, through many months, by the intimacy of correspondence which had suddenly turned to an intimacy of real converse in which she had not been disappointed, she had grown—­for it was a true growth—­to the power of a most devoted friendship, capable of great and lasting sacrifice.  It was a friendship, too, that was, as it were, pre-sanctified by the rising shadow of near death, fore-hallowed by the sure suffering of its coming end.  It would be hard indeed to cut from Gianluca’s heart the one flower of his loving belief.