matter?" asked Guido, looking at him attentively for the
first time since he had entered. "Yes," he added to his man, "Signor
Lamberti will dine with me."

The servant disappeared and shut the door. Guido repeated his question,
but Lamberti only shook his head carelessly and relit his half-smoked
cigar. Guido watched him. He was less red than usual, and his eyes
glittered in the light of the wax match. His voice had sounded sharp and
metallic, as Guido had never heard it before.

When two men are intimate friends and really trust each other they do
not overwhelm one another with questions. Each knows that each will
speak when he is ready, or needs help or sympathy.

"I have just been answering a very balmy letter from my aunt," Guido
said, rising from the table. "Sweeter than honey in the honeycomb! Read
it. It has a distinctly literary and biographical turn. The allusion to
my father's gentle disposition is touching."

Lamberti looked through the letter carelessly, dropped it on the table,
and sucked hard at his cigar.

"What did you expect?" he asked, between two puffs. "For the present you
are the apple of her eye. She will handle you as tenderly as a new-laid
egg, until she gets what she wants!"

Lamberti's similes lacked sequence, but not character.

"The Romans," observed Guido, "began with the egg and ended with the
apple. I have an idea that we are going to do the same thing at dinner,
and that there will be nothing between. But we can smoke between the
courses."

"Yes," answered Lamberti, who had not heard a word. "I daresay."

Guido looked at him again, rather furtively. Lamberti never drank and
had iron nerves, but he was visibly disturbed. He was what people
vaguely call "not quite himself."

Guido went to the door of his bedroom.

"Where are you going?" asked Lamberti, sharply.

"I am going to wash my hands before dinner," Guido answered with a
smile. "Do you want to wash yours?"

"No, thank you. I have just dressed."

He turned his back and went to the open window as Guido left the room.
In a few seconds his cigar had gone out again, and he was leaning on the
sill with both hands, staring at the twilight sky in the west. The
colours had all faded away to the almost neutral tint of straw-tempered
steel.

The outline of the Janiculum stood out sharp and black in an uneven
line. Below, there were the scattered lights of Trastevere, the flowing
river, and the silence of the deserted Via Giu