r, while her
hand lingered a second.

"How good you are to me!" he exclaimed, in a low voice. "How endlessly
good!"

She was still smiling as she withdrew her hand and leaned back in her
chair once more. A little pause followed, during which both were quite
happy, in different ways--he, perhaps, in all ways at once, and she,
because she felt she had broken through something like a sheet of ice by
a mere gesture and half a dozen words, when it had seemed so hard to do.

"No," she said thoughtfully, at last. "It is not a question of goodness.
I am natural--that is all. I do not believe that many people are. And we
had got into an absurd position, you and I!" She laughed, looking at
him. "We could write, but we could not speak. We each knew what the
other was thinking of, and yet, somehow, neither of us could say what we
thought. Was it not as I say?"

"Yes." Gianluca laughed, too, very faintly because he was weak, though
he was so happy.

"It could not last," Veronica continued, "and I am glad it is over. For
it is over, is it not? We can talk quite frankly now. Last night, for
instance. I am sure I know what you were thinking about."

"About Taquisara? At dinner?"

"Of course. He is so much more agreeable than I expected, and I am so
glad that I made him stay. And then, last night, too--did you see how
your mother looked at the serving-woman, expecting to see the butler? It
was so natural. It was just what I should have done in her place, and I
could hardly keep from laughing."

"My dear old mother is not used to such surprises," answered Gianluca.
"Of course I saw it, and knew that you did."

"Yes--but do you not think that I am quite right?" asked Veronica, her
tone changing suddenly as she seemed to appeal to him for support--she,
who needed so little from anybody.

"Of course you are," he answered promptly.

He felt unaccountably flattered and pleased by the mere fact of her
asking him the question. He felt instinctively that she had never asked
any one's opinion about her conduct, and that she really desired his
approval. She, on her part, was perhaps glad to speak freely at last
about the position she had assumed. If he had called her rash just then,
she would not have answered him as she had answered Don Teodoro when he
had used the same word.

"You see," she said, "I am not like other women. I was brought up in a
convent, like most of them, but the rest of my life has been quite
different. Well--y