“Then I may hope that you will forgive me for coming here, thinking that I might meet you?” said the young man, with a question in his voice.

“Why should you not come?” asked Veronica, not unkindly, but with the least possible inflexion of impatience.

“There can certainly be no reason, if you are not offended,” he answered.  “But if I thought that I had offended you, by coming, I should never forgive myself.”

“But I should certainly forgive you, if you offended me unintentionally.  Besides, there is no reason in the world why you should not come here to see Bianca whenever you like, if she will receive you.  She goes out very little.  She is glad to see people.”

He was a man born to throw away opportunities, an older woman would have thought; but Veronica grew impatient at his insistence upon useless things, and his thin, nervous hands irritated her vaguely as, looking down, or in front of her, she could not help seeing them clasped upon his knee.  Once, too, she was aware that Bianca leaned to one side and looked towards her, round the side of the sheet of music, as though to see how matters were progressing.  Veronica began to feel that she was in a ridiculous position.  The hesitation and pauses and silences had made the brief conversation already last nearly a quarter of an hour.  In that time Taquisara had said all he had to say.  Veronica made a little movement, a very slight indication that she would presently leave her seat.  Gianluca started and suddenly gazed earnestly into her face, so that she turned her head and met his eyes.

“Please do not go yet!” he cried in a low and earnest voice that had real entreaty in it.

“No,” she answered quickly.  “I am not going.  But I must go soon.  I cannot stay long, for I must go home to luncheon, and I have not talked with Bianca at all yet.”

“Yes—­I know—­and I must be going too,” he said nervously.  “But if you knew what it is to me to sit here beside you for a few minutes—­” He stopped suddenly, and the colour rushed to his face.

“In what way?” asked Veronica, with an impatient, womanly impulse to make him speak and have done with it, in order that there might be no more misunderstanding.

“Because—­because I love you, Donna Veronica!” He turned quite white as he found words at last.  “I must say it this once, even if you never forgive me.  This is the first happy moment I have had since I saw you the last time.  I love you—­let me tell you so before I die, and I shall die happy if you will forgive me, for I have dreamed of saying it, and longed to say it, so often.  You are my whole life, and my days and nights only have the hours of my thoughts of you to mark them.”