"Small attraction! But I can forgive you. You are a scholar, a student, a recluse--what should you know of love?" His eyes shone. "Nothing! nothing! I am ignorant of the passion," he exclaimed, flourishing his hand. "Yet I should have taken you to be too wise a man to have neglected cultivating your sympathies in the direction where the most provocation lies. Love is so human a passion, its consequences are so manifold, its influences so remarkable, that were you anything of a philosopher you would have made it a study. How can you hope to understand men, when you are ignorant of the great master-passion of humanity?" "How do you know I am so ignorant as you think me?" "I judge so by the sneers you are disposed to level at love, and by the light contemptuous manner with which you treat it." "May not that prove that I know too much?" "I don't see how. Cynicism is of superficial growth. Deep knowledge makes one grave and compassionate. The painter knew life who gave a smirk to the fool and sadness to the sage." "But it is to be expected of a man who has sounded this passion to its bottom that he should ridicule the belief in its depth, when he knows it to be shallow." "Give me leave to push your metaphor. If you speak of yourself, you probably got among the shoals, and inferred from your soundings that the deep was everywhere shallow." He gave one of his shrugs and sat silent. I took out my cigar-case and held it open to him. He declined with a wave of his hand. I glanced at his face; it was hard and angry. "Martelli," said I, "you are too sensitive. What has vexed you?" "How am I sensitive, Sir?" he asked, growing a shade pale. "I cannot tell you _how_ you are sensitive," I replied, stirred a little by the suppressed irritation of his voice; "but I think I can guess the cause of your vexation." "Pray tell me, Sir." "You think I am neglecting you for Mrs. Fraser?" He gave a fierce nod. "And you are disposed to resent my placing you in so anomalous a position as that which you now occupy?" "Sir, never mind that. I admit you have disappointed me." "I am sorry I cannot see how." "How should you see? You are blinded by love." "Signor Martelli, I must beg you to calm yourself. I cannot suffer such language as this." "But, Sir, you provoke me!" he exclaimed, gesticulating and growing yet paler. "You raise expectations to disappoint them. When I came here, I secretly pledged myself to carry you through any schemes you had a mind to indulge. All my diligence, my time, my knowledge, my patience, I meant to give to you. I liked you, Sir. Your manners pleased me. It was charming to attend one so acute and so humble--so quick to perceive and so eager to be taught. And I too had my ambitions! They are gone." "They are not gone, Martelli," I said, softened.