Orsino necessarily led a monotonous life, though, his occupation was an absorbing one.  Very early in the morning he was with Contini where the building was going on.  He then passed the hot hours of the day in the office, which, as before, had been established in one of the unfinished houses.  Towards evening, he went down into the city to his home, refreshed himself after his long day’s work, and then walked or drove until half past eight, when he went to dinner in the garden of a great restaurant in the Corso.  Here he met a few acquaintances who, like himself, had reasons for staying in town after their families had left.  He always sat at the same small table, at which there was barely room for two persons, for he preferred to be alone, and he rarely asked a passing friend to sit down with him.

On a certain hot evening in the beginning of August he had just taken his seat, and was trying to make up his mind whether he were hungry enough to eat anything or whether it would not be less trouble to drink a glass of iced coffee and go away, when he was aware of a lank shadow cast across the white cloth by the glaring electric light.  He looked up and saw Spicca standing there, apparently uncertain where to sit down for the place was fuller than usual.  He liked the melancholy old man and spoke to him, offering to share his table.

Spicca hesitated a moment and then accepted the invitation.  He deposited his hat upon a chair beside him and leaned back, evidently exhausted either in mind or body, if not in both.

“I am very much obliged to you, my dear Orsino,” he said.  “There is an abominable crowd here, which means an unusual number of people to avoid—­just as many as I know, in fact, excepting yourself.”

“I am glad you do not wish to avoid me, too,” observed Orsino, by way of saying something.

“You are a less evil—­so I choose you in preference to the greater,” Spicca answered.  But there was a not unkindly look in his sunken eyes as he spoke.

He tipped the great flask of Chianti that hung in its swinging plated cradle in the middle of the table, and filled two glasses.

“Since all that is good has been abolished, let us drink to the least of evils,” he said, “in other words, to each other.”

“To the absence of friends,” answered Orsino, touching the wine with his lips.

Spicca emptied his glass slowly and then looked at him.

“I like that toast,” he said.  “To the absence of friends.  I daresay you have heard of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden.  Do they still teach the dear old tale in these modern schools?  No.  But you have heard it—­very well.  You will remember that if they had not allowed the serpent to scrape acquaintance with them, on pretence of a friendly interest in their intellectual development, Adam and Eve would still be inventing names for the angelic little wild beasts who were too well-behaved to eat them.  They would still be in paradise.  Moreover Orsino Saracinesca and John Nepomucene Spicca would not be in daily danger of poisoning in this vile cookshop.  Summary ejection from Eden was the first consequence of friendship, and its results are similar to this day.  What nauseous mess are we to swallow to-night?  Have you looked at the card?”