by telling her the truth without prevarication, you will have done something to atone for the past evil which, you cannot undo.  I am not preaching to you, my dear friend.  Pray look upon me as a man and not as a priest.  Indeed, I would rather that you should never think of me as a priest at all.  If you need spiritual help, there are many better men than I, who can give it to you.  But as a man and a friend, come to me if you will.  You are to me also a man and a friend, and not a penitent.”

He finished speaking, took off his spectacles, and rested his head against the wall behind him, as Bosio had done, and the younger man glanced sideways at his friend’s extraordinary profile.  Its fantastic outline had a moral effect upon him; for it recalled, as nothing else could, the early days of his life before he had been what he now was, when he had known what hope meant, and had understood aspirations in others which had no meaning for him now.  He was very grateful, too, for Don Teodoro’s words, which certainly comforted him in a way he had not expected.

“Thank you,” he said, “I will think of it.  I think I shall take your advice and speak to Veronica.  She can save us all, if she will.”

“Yes,” said Don Teodoro.  “She can save you all—­and she will.”

Then they sat a long time in silence in their corner, and the priest’s mind wandered occasionally to the thought of his manuscript, and of the many points he intended to discuss with his friend Don Matteo, a man as learned as himself, but indolent instead of active, one of those passive, living treasuries of thought upon which the active worker fastens greedily when he has a chance, to extract all the riches he can in the shortest possible time, in any shape, to carry the gold away with him to his workshop and fashion it to his wish.

And Bosio, whose intelligence was essentially dramatic and given to throwing future interviews into an imaginary dramatic shape, thought over and over what he would say to Veronica and what she might be expected to say to him.  But he was terribly exhausted and harassed, and by degrees as the stimulant of recent comfort lost its cheering warmth within him, he silently grew despondent again within himself, and his dramatic fancies of fear became near and tragic realities.  He thought he could hear the clear, bell-like voice of the somnambulist telling him that he should be forced to marry Veronica.

At last, realizing that he was probably detaining Don Teodoro, he roused himself, and the two went out together into the broad light of the Piazza San Ferdinando.

“I will go home,” Bosio said.  “I will think of it all.  At this time I can easily be alone with Veronica.”

His voice sounded as though he were speaking to himself, and his head was bent, so that he stooped from the neck as Don Teodoro did.  But the latter, as he walked, his silver-rimmed spectacles balanced on his great nose, thrust his bent head more forward.  Or rather, it was as though his head moved first in the direction he meant to follow, while his thin legs had difficulty in keeping up with it.