She held out her hand to him, which she very rarely did.  He took it quietly.

“I understand you—­yes,” he said.

She looked at him a moment longer, smiled faintly, and then left the room.  After she was gone, he sat down in the chair she had occupied, crossed one knee over the other, folded his hands, and stared at the carpet.  He sat there for a long time, motionless, as though absorbed in the study of a difficult problem.  But his expression did not change, and he did not speak aloud to himself as some men do when they are alone and in great trouble, as he was then.  He was not a man of theatrical instincts, nor, indeed, of any great imagination.  Least of all was he given to anything like self-examination, or arguing with his conscience.  He was exceedingly simple in nature.  He either loved or hated, either respected or was indifferent or despised altogether, with no half-measures nor compromises.

Just then he was merely revolving the situation in his mind, and trying to see some way of escaping from it, without abandoning his friend.  But no way occurred to him which did not look cowardly, and when he rose from his seat, he had made up his mind to face his troubles as well as he could, since he could not avoid them.

He went to Gianluca’s room before he went to bed.  A small light burned behind a shade in a corner, and at first he could barely see the white face on the white pillow.  The sick man lay sound asleep, breathing almost inaudibly, one light hand lying upon the coverlet, the other hidden.  Gradually, as Taquisara looked, his eyes became accustomed to the light, and he gazed earnestly at his sleeping friend.  He saw the dark rings come out beneath the drooping lids, and the paleness of the parted lips, and the terrible emaciation of the thin hand.

But there was life still, and hope.  Hope that the man might still live and stand among men, hope that he might yet marry Veronica Serra—­and be happy.  In the half-darkness, Taquisara set his teeth, biting hard, as though he would have bitten through iron, lest a sharp breath should escape him and disturb the sleeper’s rest.

That frail thing, that ghost, that airy remnant of a man, lay there, alive in name, between Taquisara and the mere right to think of his own happiness; and next to the reality of the shadow of his dream, he loved best on earth this shadow of reality that would not die.  For he loved Veronica with all his heart, and after her, Gianluca della Spina.  Above both stood honour.

He knew that he was loyal and true as he stood there, and that there was not in the inmost inward heart of him a mean, double-faced wish that his friend might die there, peacefully, and leave to the winning of the strong what the weak had wooed in vain.  He had spoken the truth when he had said that for his friend’s life he was giving all he had, when he did his best to persuade Veronica that she must marry the dying man, in the bare hope of saving him