For he felt the want of companionship.  Those who have lost what is most worth having, whether by death or by their own fault, or by the other’s, miss the companionship of love more than anything else, when the pain of the first wrench is dulled and the heart’s blood is staunched, and the dreadful bodily loneliness comes only in dreams.  Then the longing for the old sweet intercourse of thought and word makes itself felt and is very hard to bear, though it is not sharp like the first wound; and it comes again and again for years, and perhaps for ever.

But where there is no true companionship while love lasts, there is something lacking, and such love cannot live long.  Men seem to want it more than women do; and women, seeing that men want something, often fancy they want flattery, and natter the men they love till they disgust them; and then the end comes suddenly, much to the astonishment of those women.

Regina was too womanly not to feel that Marcello was in real need of something which she had not, and could never have.  She had known it from the first, and had almost told him so.  She gave what was hers to give, as long as he wanted it; when he wanted it no more, she meant to leave him, and it would make no difference what became of her afterwards.

When she had finished speaking, Marcello was very miserable, because he could find no answer to what she had said, and he felt that she had no right to say it at all.  His head ached now, from excitement and want of sleep, and he almost wished that he had put off speaking to Regina about her marriage.  He rested his head in his hand as he sat thinking, and she came and stood beside him as she had done in the morning in the little house in Trastevere.  But it was not the same now.  She hoped that he would put up his other hand to find hers, without looking at her, as he often did, but it gripped his knee as if he did not mean to move it, and he did not raise his head.

She looked up from his bent figure to the window and saw that the light was reddening with the first tinge of sunset.  It would soon be night, Marcello would go away, and she would be dreadfully lonely.  It was not like being in the little house, knowing that he was near her, in the great villa on top of the hill, hidden from her only by trees.  She was in a strange place now, and he would be far away, across the Tiber, and the great dark city would be between her and him.

For an instant her lip quivered, and she thought she was going to cry, though she had never cried in her life, except for rage and when she had been a little girl.  She shook her handsome head impatiently at the mere sensation, and held it higher than ever.  Then Marcello looked up at last.

As their eyes met they heard the tinkle of the little bell.  Regina at once left his side to go and open the door.  It was not till she had left the room that Marcello rose, asking himself suddenly why it had not occurred to him to go himself.  He realised that he had always allowed her to wait on him without question.  Yet if she were his wife, he would not think of letting her do what she was doing now.  He would even open the door of the room for her to go out.