friendship--so have you perhaps. And we both understand
what it means, though many do not. That is why I speak as I do, and if I
do not speak well, you must forgive me, and feel the meaning I cannot
express to your ears. Gianluca loves you, Donna Veronica, as men very
rarely love women, so immensely, so strongly, that his love is burning
up his life in him--and it has all been kept from you for some reason or
other, while your relations are doing their best to make you marry Bosio
Macomer, who can no more be compared with Gianluca della Spina than--"

He checked himself, for he felt that his tone was contemptuous, and
remembered that Veronica might perhaps like Bosio. She was listening,
her eyes fixed on the distance, her mind wide open to the new experience
of life which had come so unexpectedly.

"He cannot be compared with Gianluca," continued Taquisara, modifying
his sentence and omitting whatever simile had presented itself in his
thoughts. "If you knew Gianluca, you would understand. It is because I
know him well that I speak for him, that I implore you, pray you,
beseech you, to see him before you consent to marry Count Bosio--"

"To see him!" exclaimed Veronica, startled at the sudden proposition,
which was a blow to every tradition she had ever learned.

But the Sicilian was not a man to hesitate at trifles where women were
concerned, nor men either.

"Yes--to see him!" he answered with a certain vehemence. "Is it a sin?
Is it a crime? Is it dishonourable? Why should you cry out? What is
society that it should take you young girls by the throat, like martyrs,
and chain you with proprieties to the stake of its rigid law--to be
burnt to death afterwards by slow fire, like your best friend there,
Donna Bianca? Ah--you understand that. You know her life, and I know it
too. It is the life--or the death--to which you may look forward if you
will neither open your eyes to see, nor raise your hand to guard
yourself. And you cry out in outraged horror at the idea of seeing
Gianluca della Spina here, in this garden, by these steps, under God's
sunlight, as you see me here to-day by accident. It seems to you--what
shall I say?--unladylike!" Taquisara laughed scornfully. "What does it
matter whether you are unladylike or not, so long as you are womanly,
and kind, and brave? I am telling you truths you have never heard, but
you have a woman's right to hear them, whatever you may think of me. And
I speak for another. I h