Bruno was silent for a moment, and then he said in a thick voice:
"I understand! God help you, David Rossi. It's a lonely road you mean to travel."
Rossi drew a long breath and made ready to write.
"Good-night, Bruno."
"Good-night," said Bruno, and the good fellow went out with wet eyes.
II
The night was far gone, and the city lay still, while Rossi replied to Roma.
"My dear R.,—You have nothing to reproach yourself with in regard to my poor doings, or tryings-to-do. They were necessary, and if the penalties had been worse a hundredfold I should not chew the cud of my bargain now. Besides your wish, I had another motive, a secret motive, and perhaps, if I were a good Catholic, I should confess too, although not with a view to penance. Apparently, it has come out well, and now that it seems to be all over, both your scheme and mine, now that the wrong I did you is to some extent undone, and my own object is in some measure achieved, I find myself face to face with a position in which it is my duty to you as well as to myself to bring our intercourse to an end.
"The truth is that we cannot be friends any longer, for the reason that I love some one in whom you are, unhappily, too much interested, and because there are obstacles between that person and myself which are decisive and insurmountable. This alone puts it on me as a point of honour that you and I should never see each other again. Each of my visits adds to my embarrassment, to the feeling that I am doing wrong in paying them, and to the certainty that I must give them up altogether.
"Thank you again and again for the more than pleasant hours we have spent together. It is not your fault that I must bury the memory of them in oblivion. This does not mean that it is any part of the painful but unavoidable result of circumstances I cannot explain, that we should not write to each other as occasion may arise. Continue to think of me as your brother—your brother far away—to be called upon for counsel in your hour of need and necessity. And whenever you call, be sure I shall be there.