His face helped him, for he did not easily betray emotion; he rarely changed colour at all, and was not a man of mobile features. But he had grown thinner since he had been in Muro, and the clearly cut curves that marked the Saracen strain in him were sharper and more defined.

He went in and met Veronica in the large room in which they usually fenced, and which lay between what was really the drawing-room and the apartment set aside for Gianluca and Taquisara. She was standing alone beside the table, her face very white, and as she turned to Taquisara, he saw something desperate in her eyes.

"I have seen the doctor again," she said, not waiting for any greeting, and knowing that he would understand.

"And I have seen the priest," answered Taquisara.

She started, and pressed her lips tightly to suppress something. Her eyes wandered slowly and then came back to the Sicilian before she spoke.

"You have done right," she said, and then paused a second. "He is going to die to-day," she added, very low.

"That is not sure," replied Taquisara. "The doctor says that he has known cases--"

"No," interrupted Veronica. "I know it--I feel it."

She was resting one hand on the heavy table, and as she spoke she bent down, as though bowed in bodily pain. Taquisara saw the sharp lines in the smooth young forehead, and his teeth bit hard on one another as he watched her. He could not speak. With a quick-drawn breath she straightened herself suddenly and looked at him again. He thought he saw the very slightest moisture, not in her eyes, but on the lower lids and just below them. It was very hard to shed tears, and not like her.

"Hope!" he said gently.

During what seemed a long time they stood looking at each other with unchanging faces, and neither spoke. Some people know that dead silence which descends while fate's great hand is working in the dark, and men hold their breath and shut their eyes, listening speechless for the dull footfall of near destiny.

At last Veronica, without a word, turned from the table and went slowly towards a door. Taquisara did not move. When her hand was on the lock, she turned her head.

"Stand by me, whatever I do to-day," she said earnestly.

"Yes. I will."

He did not find any eloquent words nor oaths of protest, but she saw his face and believed him. She bent her head once, as though acknowledging his promise, and she went out quietly, closing the door behind her.

Some minutes pa.s.sed before Taquisara also left the room in the other direction. He wondered why she had said those last words, for he had seen again that desperate look in her face and did not understand it.

Perhaps she meant to marry Gianluca before he died, and at the thought Taquisara felt as though a strong man had struck him a heavy blow just on his heart, and for one instant he steadied himself by the table and swallowed hard, as though the breath were out of him. It did not last a moment. Then he, too, went out, to go to his friend.

Gianluca was gentle, quiet, almost cheerful, on that morning. He had evidently forgotten that he had opened his eyes and seen Taquisara standing by his bedside in the night, nor would he have thought anything of so common an occurrence had it come back to his recollection. He certainly did not remember having spoken of dying. But he was very weak, and his face was deadly pale, rather than transparent, as it usually seemed.

Taquisara had thought of what the doctor had said about his sufferings, and hesitated before lifting him to carry him to the next room.

"Tell me," he said, "does it hurt you very much when I take you up?"

"It hurts," answered Gianluca, with a smile. "Hurting is relative, you know. I can bear it very well. There are things that hurt more."

"What? When you try to move alone?"

"Oh no! Imaginary things. You hurt me very little--you are so careful.

What should I have done without you?"

Taquisara had never touched him so tenderly before, though he was always as gentle as a woman with him. He lifted him, carried him from his bedroom and laid him in his accustomed chair. The pale head rested with a sigh upon the brown silk cushion.

"Thank you," he said faintly. "That was better than ever. But I am better to-day, too."

The Sicilian said nothing, but proceeded to arrange all the invalid's small belongings near him,--his books, his cigarettes,--for he sometimes smoked a little,--and the stimulant he took, and a few wild flowers which Elettra renewed every morning. Gianluca drew a breath of satisfaction when all was done. He really felt a little better, and by Taquisara's care had suffered less than usual in the moving. His father and mother had been in to see him as usual, before he was up, and before they went out for their daily walk. Veronica would not come yet, but he had the true invalid's pleasure in antic.i.p.ating the coming of a well-loved woman. As often happens in such cases he seemed quite unconscious of his approaching danger.

He was not surprised when Don Teodoro came in, a little later, and the two very soon fell into conversation together. Taquisara presently went away and left them, as he often did when they began to talk of books.

Half an hour had not pa.s.sed since his meeting with Veronica, but as he again entered the room where they had met, he found her standing before the window, looking out, and twisting her handkerchief slowly with both her hands. She started when she heard him come in, and she turned her head to see who it was that had opened the door. To go on, he had to pa.s.s near her, and she kept her eyes on his face as he approached her.

"How is he?" she asked in a voice hardly recognizable as her own.

She had an agonized look, and she raised her handkerchief to her mouth quickly, and held it, almost biting it, while he answered her.

"He says that he feels better. Don Teodoro is there. He has just come.

Is there anything that I can do?"

She shook her head, still holding the handkerchief to her lips, and again looked out of the window. He waited a moment longer and then pa.s.sed on, leaving her alone. He saw that she was half mad with anxiety, and he neither trusted himself to speak, nor believed that speaking could be of any use. He went down to the lower bastion, where he could be alone, and for a long time he walked steadily up and down, trying hard to think of nothing, and sometimes counting his steps as he walked, in order to keep his mind from itself.

He did not idealize the woman he loved, for he was not a man of ideals, nor of much imagination. Such defects as she might have, he did not see, and if he had seen them he would have been indifferent to them. To such a man, loving meant everything and admitted of no comment, because there was no part of him left free to judge. He was a whole-souled man, who asked no questions of himself and no advice of others. He had never needed counsel, in his own opinion, and for the rest, what he felt was himself and not a secondary, dual being of separate pa.s.sions and impressions which he could a.n.a.lyze and examine. He had never comprehended that strange machine of nicely-balanced doubts and certainties, forever in a state of half-morbid equilibrium between the wish, the thought, and the deed--such a man as Pietro Ghisleri was, for instance, who would refuse a beggar an alms lest the giving should be a satisfaction to his own vanity, and then, perhaps, would turn back in pity and give the poor wretch half a handful of silver. When Taquisara once knew that he loved Veronica, he never reverted to a state of doubt.

He fought against it, because his friend had loved her first, and rooting himself where he stood, as it were, he would have let the pa.s.sion tear him piecemeal rather than be moved by it. But he never had the smallest doubt as to what the pa.s.sion was in itself and might be, in its consequences, if he should be weak for one moment. Simple struggles, when they are for life and death, are more terrible than any complicated conflict can possibly be.

Don Teodoro was a long time alone with Gianluca. Whatever reasons he had of his own for not wishing to comply with Taquisara's request, he overcame them and faithfully carried out the mission imposed upon him.

In itself it was no very hard one. Gianluca was a religious man, as Taquisara had said that he was, and he knew that he was very ill, though he did not believe himself to be dying. With his character and in his condition, he was glad to talk seriously with such a man as Don Teodoro, and then to lay before him the account of his few shortcomings according to the practice of his belief.

The old priest came out at last, grave and bent, and, going through the rooms, he came upon Veronica standing alone where Taquisara had left her. She did not know how long she had stood there, waiting for him. He paused before her, and her eyes questioned him.

"He wishes to see you," he said simply.

"How is he?" He had not understood her unspoken question. "How is he?"

she repeated, as he hesitated a moment.

"To me he seems no worse. He says that he feels better to-day. But there is something, some change--something, I cannot tell what it is, since I last saw him."

"Stay here--please stay in the house!" said Veronica. "He may need you."

While she was speaking she had gone to the door, and she went out without looking back. A moment later, she was by Gianluca's side. She saw that what Don Teodoro had said was true. There was an undefinable change in his features since the previous day, and at the first sight of it her heart stood still an instant and the blood left her face, so that she felt very cold. She kept her back to the light, that he might not see that she was disturbed, and while she asked him how he was, her hands touched, and displaced, and replaced the little objects on the small table beside him,--the book, the gla.s.s, the flowers in the silver cup, the silver cigarette case, the things which, being quite helpless, he liked to have within his reach.

"I really feel better to-day," he said, watching her lovingly, as he answered her question. "I wish I could go out."

"You can be carried out upon the balcony in a little while," she said.

"It is too cool, yet. It was a cold night, for we are getting near the end of August."

"And in Naples they are sweltering in the heat," he answered, smiling.

"It is beautiful here. I can see the mountains through the open window, and the flowers tell me what the hillsides are like, in the sunshine.

Taquisara says that your maid brings them every morning. Thank you--of course it is one of your endless kind doings."

"No," replied Veronica, frankly. "It is her way of showing her devotion, poor thing! Everybody loves you in the house--even the people who have hardly ever seen you. The women, speak of you as 'that angel'!" She tried to laugh cheerfully.

"I am glad they like me, though I have done nothing to be liked by them.

Please thank your maid for me. It is very kind of her."

There was a little disappointment in his voice; for he had been happy in believing that Veronica sent the flowers herself, not because he needed coin of kindness to prove her wealth of friendship, but because whatever small thing came from her hand had so much more value for him than the greatest and most that any one else could give.