ne
leg crossed over the other, the knee that was upper-most pressing
against the stout stick he held across it, and the big veins swelled on
his hands and wrists. He was a sailor, and a born fighting man; and in
ten years of service he had managed to find himself in every affair that
had concerned Italy in the remotest degree, in Africa, in China, and
elsewhere. He was now at home on leave, expecting immediate promotion.
He bore a historical name; he was called Lamberto Lamberti.

His companion sat with folded arms and bent head, a rather dark young
man with deep-set grey eyes that often looked black, a thoughtful face,
a grave mouth that could smile suddenly and almost strangely, with a
child's sweet frankness, and yet with a look that was tender and
human--the smile of a man who understands the meaning of life and yet
does not despise it. Most people would have taken him for a man of
leisure, probably given to reading or the cultivation of some artistic
taste. Guido d'Este was one of those Italians who are content to survive
from a very beautiful past without joining the frantic rush for a very
problematic future. But there was more in him than a love of books and a
knowledge of pictures; for he was a dreamer, and there are dreams better
worth dreaming than many deeds are worth the doing.

"I sometimes wonder what would have happened to you and me," he said,
after there had been a long pause, "if we had been obliged to live each
other's lives."

"We should both have been bored to extinction," answered Lamberti,
without hesitating.

"I suppose so," assented Guido, and relapsed into silence.

He was very glad that he was not condemned to the life of a naval
officer, to the perpetual motion of active service, to the narrow
quarters of a lieutenant on a modern man-of-war, to the daily
companionship of a dozen or eighteen other officers with whom he could
certainly not have an idea in common. It would be a detestable thing to
be sent at a moment's notice from one end of the world to the other,
from heat to cold, from cold to heat, through all sorts of weather, only
to be a part of an organisation, a wheel in a machine, a pawn in some
one's game of chess. He had been on board a line-of-battle ship once to
see his friend off, and had mentally noted the discomfort. There was
nothing in the cabin but a bunk built over a chest of drawers, a narrow
transom, a wash-stand that disappeared into a recess when pushed back,
an e