o would certainly go out of this
world with no hope of the next? Yet, when he was gone at last, would it
be no slur on the memory of such true friendship to do what would have
hurt him, if he could have known of it? Lamberti was not sure. Like some
strong men of rough temperament, he had hidden delicacies of feeling
that many a girl would have thought foolish and exaggerated, and they
were the more sensitive because they were so secret, and he never
suffered outward things to come in contact with them, nor spoke of them,
even to Guido.

Some people said that Guido was Quixotic, and he was certainly the
personification of honour. If the papers Lamberti had safe in his pocket
had come into Guido's possession as they had come into Lamberti's own,
Guido would have sent them back to Princess Anatolie, quite sure that
she had a right to them, whether they were partly forged or not, because
he had originally given them to her and nothing could induce him to take
them back. The reason why Guido's illness had turned into brain fever
was simply that he believed his honourable reputation among men to have
been gravely damaged by an article in a newspaper. Honour was his god,
his religion, and his rule of life; it was all he had beyond the
material world, and it was sacred. He had not that something else,
simple but undefinable, and as sensitive as an uncovered nerve, that lay
under his friend's rougher character and sturdier heart. Nature would
never have chosen him to be one instrument in that mysterious harmony of
two sleeping beings which had linked Cecilia and Lamberti in their
dreams. It was not the melancholy and intellectual Cassius who trembled
before Caesar's ghost at Philippi; it was rough Brutus, the believer in
himself and the man of action.

The illness ran its course. While it continued Lamberti went every other
day to the Palazzo Massimo and told the two ladies of Guido's state. He
and Cecilia looked at each other silently, but she never showed that she
wished to be alone with him, and he made no attempt to see her except in
her mother's presence. Both felt that Guido was dying, and knew that
they had some share in his sufferings. As soon as the Countess learned
that the danger was real she gave up all thought of leaving Rome, and
there was no discussion about it between her and her daughter. She was
worldly and often foolish, but she was not unkind, and she had grown
really fond of Guido since the spring. So they