“All that is absurd!” answered Gianluca, petulantly.

“Is it absurd?  Then I will begin by doing it for you, and see what happens.”

“You?” The younger man turned in surprise.

“I.  Yes.  All the more, as I have nothing to lose.  I will go and find Bosio Macomer and talk with him—­”

“You will insult him,” said Gianluca, anxiously.  “There will be a quarrel—­I know you—­and a quarrel about her.”

“Why should we quarrel?” asked Taquisara.  “I will congratulate him on his betrothal.  I know him well enough for that, and in the course of conversation something may appear which we do not know.  Besides, if I go to the house, I may possibly meet Donna Veronica; if I do, I shall soon know everything, for I will speak to her of you.  I know her.”

“One sees that you are not a Neapolitan,” said Gianluca, smiling faintly.

“No,” answered the other, “I am not.”  And he laughed with a sort of quiet consciousness of strength which his friend secretly envied.  “It is true,” he added, “that things look easy to me here, which would be utterly impossible in Palermo.  We are different with our women—­and we are different when we love.  Thank Heaven, for the present—­I am as I am.”

He smiled and relit his cigar, which had gone out.

“No,” said Gianluca.  “You have never been in love, I think.”

His fair young head leaned back wearily against the chair, and his eyes were half closed as he spoke.

“Nor ever shall be, in your way, my friend,” answered the Sicilian, rising from his seat.  “I suppose it is because we are so different that we have always been such good friends.  But then—­one need not look for reasons.  It is enough that it is so.”

Again he took the delicate, thin hand in his and pressed it, and went away, much more anxious about Gianluca than he was willing to show.  For though he had suspected much of what he now saw, as a possibility, it was a phase too new and startling not to trouble him greatly.  It will readily be conceived that if Gianluca had always been the weak and dejected and despairing individual from whom Taquisara parted that morning, there could never have been much friendship between the two.  But Gianluca, not in love, had been a very different person.  With an extremely delicate organization and a very sensitive nature, he was naturally of a gay and sunny temper.  The two had done voluntary military service in the same regiment during more than a year, and their rank, together with the fact that they were both from the south, had in the first place drawn them together.  Before long they had become firm friends.  In his normal condition Gianluca, though never strong, was brave, frank, and cheerful.  Taquisara thought him at times poetic and visionary, but liked the impossible loftiness of his young ideals, because Taquisara himself was naturally attracted by all that looked impossible.  Amongst a number of rather gay and thoughtless young