"What makes you think that I shall be great, Corona? Nobody ever thinks I am even clever. My father would laugh at you, and say it is quite enough greatness to be born a Saracinesca. What makes you think it?"
Corona stood up beside him and laid her delicate hand upon his thick, close-cut black hair, and gazed into his eyes.
"I know it," she said. "I know it, because I love you so. A man like you must be great. There is something in you that nobody guesses but I, that will amaze people some day—I know it."
"I wonder if you could tell me what it is? I wonder if it is really there at all?" said Giovanni.
"It is ambition," said Corona, gravely. "You are the most ambitious man I ever knew, and nobody has found it out."
"I believe it is true, Corona," said Giovanni, turning away and leaning upon the chimneypiece, his head supported on one hand. "I believe you are right. I am ambitious: if I only had the brains that some men have I would do great things."
"You are wrong, Giovanni. It is neither brains nor ambition nor strength that you lack—it is opportunity."
"They say that a man who has anything in him creates opportunities for himself," answered Giovanni, rather sadly. "I fear it is because I really have nothing in me that I can do nothing. It sometimes makes me very unhappy to think so. I suppose that is because my vanity is wounded."
"Do not talk like that," said Corona. "You have vanity, of course, but it is of the large kind, and I call it ambition. It is not only because I love you better than any man was ever loved before that I say that. It is that I know it instinctively I have heard you say that these are unsettled times. Wait; your opportunity will come, as it came often to your forefathers in other centuries."
"I hardly think that their example is a good one," replied Giovanni, with a smile.