He did not despise women either; indeed, his conduct in the affair of his betrothal had proved that. Now and then he had paused in his restless career to think of a more peaceful life, and in the pictures that rose before his imagination there was generally a woman. Unhappily, he had never seen any one like her in real life, and when he was tired of dreaming he shrugged his shoulders at such impossibilities and went back to his adventurous existence without a sigh. Yet it might be thought that although he did not fall in love he might now and then spend careless hours with the free and frail, for he made no profession or show of austerity, and whatever he really might be, he did not aspire to be called a saint. He had been a wild student in Padua once, and had drunk deep and played high, until he had suddenly grown tired of stupid dissipation and had left the dice to play the more exciting game of life and death as a soldier of fortune under a condottiere, during five long wandering years. But at the core of his nature there was something ascetic which his comrades could never understand, and at which they laughed when he was not within hearing; for he was an evil man to quarrel with, as they had found out. He never killed his man in a duel if he could help it, but he had a way of leaving his mark for life on his adversary's face which few cared to risk. And now it was long indeed since his lips had touched a woman's, for his character had taken its final manly shape, and the only folly to which he still yielded now and then was that of risking his life recklessly whenever he fancied that a cause was worth it; but this he did not look upon as madness, still less as weakness, and there was no one to argue the question with him. His honest brown eyes softened sometimes, almost like a woman's, but only for pity or kindness, never for word or look of love.