“I see you don’t understand,” he said, with something between a groan and a sigh. “Well then, I’ll try again. Here are the circumstances. I am admitted to the house, a very nice house, in which I am very happy. The father puts faith in me; he trusts me like a friend; the young lady is--everything that is nice. Well! don’t you see? like a fool, instead of keeping quiet and enjoying all this, like a fool I have gone and fallen in love with her. And last night I was as near betraying myself---- Now if I go on I’ll be more and more tempted to betray myself. I can’t keep away from the house--it is not possible. I can’t offer to the young lady because I am not good enough for her, and I have no money. Now what am I to do?” “You were at the house of the Signor Vice-Consul last night?” “Never mind where I was,” said Harry sharply, “tell me what I am to do.” “It would be well, amico mio, that your confidence was more great, or none at all,” said Paolo. “If it should happen that I possessed the acquaintance of the father and the daughter----” There was a little incipient smile upon his lip that drove Harry wild. “I believe you think badly of every woman,” he cried; “all the worse for you if you do. I am not going to make any confidences of that sort. Look here--you know more about society than I do. You know how people are expected to behave here. Ought I just to cut the whole concern, though I don’t want to--and take myself off?” Harry came to a sudden stop in front of his friend when he asked this question, and, for his part, Paolo almost screamed with alarm. “Cut--the whole concern? That is to go away?” “To go away,” said Harry, discharging all the breath out of his capacious chest in one great sigh, and throwing himself into the second great chair opposite Paolo. His friend grew pale; his olive cheeks were blanched; the lids were puckered round his anxious and almost despairing eyes. “That is what you must not do--that is what you shall not do! It is not permitted to throw away, to make such a sacrifice,” cried Paolo, with a rapid succession of phrases, one broken sentence hurrying upon another. “No, no, no, no. Imagine to yourself that all goes so well. The world regards you with so favourable eyes; you are everywhere received, everywhere received!--a favourite, Isaack mio. But no, no; this must not be--for a girl--for a promise--for a caprice, you will not throw away your career.”