to be said for it.  It is time that you were married, you know.  You and I have lived our lives, and we are not what we were.  I shall always be fond of you—­we shall always be more than friends—­but always less than what we have been.  It must have come sooner or later, Bosio, and it may as well come now.  You know—­we cannot be always young.  And as for me, if I am not already old, I soon shall be.”

The woman who had held him so long knew how to tempt him, sacrificing everything in the desperate straits to which she was reduced.  Though he had loved her well, and sinfully, but truly, for so many years, his love had sometimes seemed an unbearable thraldom, to escape from which he would have given his heart piecemeal, though he should lose all the happiness life held for him, for the sake of a momentary freedom.  Possibly, too, she knew that he never longed for that freedom so much as when she had just been most violent and despotic.  She was prepared for the feeble dissent with which he answered her suggestion of separation.  He would be the more easily persuaded to yield and marry Veronica.

“As for your being old,” he said, “it is absurd.  It is I who have grown old of late.  But our being friends—­” he paused thoughtfully.

“A man is never too old to marry,” answered Matilde.  “It is only women who grow too old to be loved.  You will begin your life all over again with Veronica.  You and she will go away together—­you can live in Rome, when you are tired of Paris.  It will be better.  You and I will see each other seldom at first.  By and by it will be so easy for us to be good friends after we have been separated some time.”

“Friends?” Bosio spoke the one word again, with a sad and dreamy intonation.

“I asked Veronica this morning,” continued Matilde, not heeding him, and beginning to speak more rapidly.  “You have no idea how very fond she is of you.  When I spoke of the marriage, she seemed to think it the most natural thing in the world.  She found arguments for it herself.”

“She?”

“Yes.  She said—­what I have said to you—­that there was no man whom she knew so well and liked so much as you, that of course she had never thought of marrying you, nor, indeed, of being married at all, but that, at the same time, she should think that you would make a very good husband.  She wished to think of it—­that is as much as to say that she will not even make any serious objections.  You have no idea how young girls feel about marriage, Bosio.  How should you?  You cannot comprehend the horror a girl like Veronica feels of a stranger, of a man like Gianluca, even, whom she has met half a dozen times and talked with.  It seems so dreadful to think of spending a lifetime with a man about whom she knows nothing, or next to nothing.  And yet it is the custom, and most of them accept it and are happy.  But the idea of marrying some one with whom she is really intimate, whom she really likes, who really understands her, places marriage in a new light for a young girl.  Without knowing it, Veronica is half in love with you.  It is no wonder that she likes the thought of being your wife—­apart from the fact that you are a very desirable husband.”