"I've no doubt. And that makes it quite certain to end our comradeship."
"You croak like a raven!" declared the Sicilian. "What has soured you?"
"Nothing. I am a wise young man, that's all. You see, happiness is all-sufficient; it needs nothing to complete itself. It is a wall beyond which the owner does not care to wander, so, when you are quite happy with the new Countess, you will forget your friends of unmarried days."
"Would you then have me unhappily married?"
"By no means. I am full of regrets at losing you, nothing more."
"It is plain, then, that you also must marry. Is there no admirable
American lady?"
"Any quantity of them, but I don't care much for women except in an impersonal sort of way, or perhaps I don't attract them. I might enjoy falling in love if it were not such a tedious process."
"It is not necessarily tedious. One may love with the suddenness of an explosion. I have done so, many times."
"I know you have, but you are a Sicilian; we go about such things in a dignified and respectable manner. Love is a serious matter with us. We don't explode."
"Yes. When you love, you marry; and you marry in the same way you buy a farm. But we have blood in our veins and lime in our bones. I have loved many women to distraction; there is only one whom I would marry."