With a half-childish smile on his pale face, he wondered what such a man as Taquisara would do, if he were so placed, and the Sicilian’s manly face and bold eyes rose up contemptuously before him.  To such a depth as Bosio had already reached, Taquisara could never have fallen.  Bosio’s instinct told him that.

If he had been able to find one friend in all his acquaintance to whom he might turn and ask advice, it would have been an infinite relief.  But such friends were rare, he knew, and he had never made one.  Pleasant acquaintances he had, by the score and the hundred, in society, and amongst artists and men of letters.  But the life he had led had shut out friendship.  To have a friend would have been to let some one into his life, and that would have meant, sooner or later, the betrayal of the woman he loved.

Yet, though he felt that Taquisara was his enemy and not his friend, he had such sudden confidence in the man’s honour and truth that he was insanely impelled to go to him and tell him all, and implore him to save Veronica at any cost, no matter what, or to whom.  Then of course, a moment later, the thought seemed madness, and he only felt that he was losing hold more quickly upon his saner sense.  His visit to the somnambulist, too, had helped to unnerve him, and as he wandered through the streets he forgot that it was time to eat, so that physical faintness came upon him unawares and suddenly.

He did not wish to go home; for if he did, the final decision would be thrust upon him by Matilde, and he did not feel that he could face another scene with her yet.  When he found himself near the Palazzo Macomer, he turned back, walking slowly, and went towards the sea, till he came to the vast Piazza San Ferdinando, beyond San Carlo.  He went into a cafe and sat down in a corner to drink a cup of chocolate by way of luncheon.  The seat he had chosen was at the end of one of the long red velvet divans close to a big window looking upon the square.  There were little marble tables in a row, and at the one before that which Bosio chose, a priest was seated, reading, with an empty cup before him.  He was evidently near-sighted, for he held his newspaper so near his eyes that Bosio could not have seen his face even had he thought of looking at it.  The priest had thrown back his heavy black cloak after he had sat down, so that it fell in wide folds upon the seat, on each side of him.  His hands, which held up the paper, while he seemed to be searching for something in the columns, were thin to emaciation, almost transparent, and very carefully kept,—­a fact which might have argued that he was not an ordinary, hard-working parish priest of the people, even if his presence in a fashionable cafe had not of itself made that seem improbable.  On the other hand, he wore heavy, coarse shoes; his clothes, though well brushed, were visibly threadbare, and his clean white stock was frayed at the edge and almost worn out.  He had