"Can you deny that it plagues and worries you more than the whole affair is worth? It makes one idle and womanly, and that is the worst of all. If we were not fools, longing for the impossible, all were well, one as good as another, if she were pretty and kind." "I think not. I require something more than _any one_ can give me, unless I am to leave her for the sake of some other." "Who spoke of that?"--"Both of us, I think." "Not I," said Bianchi. "I never could dream that you know your own advantages so little--with your face and your years." He said no more, seemingly out of humour. "Let it be as it may." said Theodore, earnestly, "and let each one care for himself, and be glad that the other can be happy after his own fashion." They never touched upon this subject again. Bianchi seemed to have entirely forgotten it, and Theodore did not agitate it. The old bitterness and fierceness of the sick man returned more and more as his wounds healed, and those rare touches of gentleness which he had shown to his friend disappeared for ever. He avoided giving him his hand; he never spoke of himself nor his feelings, never asked Theodore about his plans nor his past life, and hardly ever called him by his name; yet he never avoided Theodore's frequent visits, nor refused the little comforts which he brought him. Only once, when he saw some fruit in a basket, arranged beneath a layer of the earliest violets, with that delicate taste which belongs to a woman's hand alone, he placed the present coldly, and without saying a word, upon the mantelpiece. Theodore was silent; when he went he took the basket with him as he had brought it. Still he continued to read to him--old poets, extracts from Dante and Tasso, and, at last, Machiavelli. The old deities, whose statues, scattered about Rome, had hitherto been to him merely fine carvings, semi-vivified by indistinct ideas, now became clear and living. It seemed as if he now for the first time saw with his waking eyes the world in which he had so long wandered in dreams. And the desire to go abroad awoke in him, and he longed to visit, personally, all that his imagination had clearly, and for the first time, thoroughly grasped.