ut out against the sky.
He wondered idly whether he should ever come again--whether, after all,
it would be cowardly to go to sleep with the certainty of not waking,
and whether he should find anything beyond, or not.

The world looked too familiar to him to be interesting, as if he had
known it too long, and he vaguely wished that he could change it, and
desire to stay in it for its own sake; and just then it occurred to him
that every man carries with him the world in which he must live, the
stage and the scenery for his own play. It would be absurd to pretend,
he thought, that his own material world was the same as Lamberti's, even
when the latter was at home. They knew the same people, heard the same
talk, ate the same things, looked on the same sights, breathed the same
air. There was perhaps no sacrifice worthy of honourable men which
either of them would not make for the other. Yet, to Guido d'Este, life
seemed miserably indifferent where it did not seem a real calamity,
while to Lamberti every second of it was worth fighting for, because it
was worth enjoying.

Guido looked at his friend's tanned neck and sturdy shoulders, following
him to the door, and he realised more clearly than ever before that he
was not of the same race. He felt the satiety bred in many generations
of destiny's spoilt and flattered sons; the absence of anything like a
grasping will, caused by the too easy fulfilment of every careless wish;
the over-critical sense that guesses at hidden imperfection, the cruelly
unerring instinct of a taste too tired to enjoy and yet too fine to be
deceived.

Lamberti turned at the door and saw his face.

"What are you thinking about?"

"I was envying you," Guido murmured. "You are glad to be alive."

Lamberti made rather an impatient gesture, but said nothing. The Sister
who had admitted the two opened the little iron door for them to go out.
She was a small woman, with a worn face and kind brown eyes, one of the
half-dozen who live in the little convent and work among the children of
the very poor in that quarter. Both men had taken out money.

"For the poor children, if you please," said Guido, placing his offering
in the nun's hand.

"And tell them to pray for a man who is in trouble," added Lamberti,
giving her money.

She looked at him curiously, thinking, perhaps, that
he meant himself. Then she gravely bent her head.

"I thank you very much," she said.

The small iron door closed with