He was perhaps not so much to blame as he was willing to allow in his just anger against himself.  Corona had tempted him sorely in that last question she had put to him.  She had not known, she had not even faintly guessed what she was doing, for her own brain was intoxicated with a new and indescribable sensation which had left no room for reflection nor for weighing the force of words.  But Giovanni, who had been willing to give up everything, even to his personal liberty, for the sake of concealing his love, would not allow himself any argument in extenuation of what he had done.  He had had but very few affairs of the heart in his life, and they had been for the most part very insignificant, and his experience was limited.  Even now it never entered his mind to imagine that Corona would condone his offence; he felt sure that she was deeply wounded, and that his next meeting with her would be a terrible ordeal—­so terrible, indeed, that he doubted whether he had the courage to meet her at all.  His love was so great, and its object so sacred to him, that he hesitated to conceive himself loved in return; perhaps if he had been able to understand that Corona loved him he would have left Rome for ever, rather than trouble her peace by his presence.

It would have been absolutely different if he had been paying court to Donna Tullia, for instance.  The feeling that he should be justified would have lent him courage, and the coldness in his own heart would have left his judgment free play.  He could have watched her calmly, and would have tried to take advantage of every mood in the prosecution of his suit.  He was a very honourable man, but he did not consider marriages of propriety and convenience as being at all contrary to the ordinary standard of social honour, and would have thought himself justified in using every means of persuasion in order to win a woman whom, upon mature reflection, he had judged suitable to become his wife, even though he felt no real love for her.  That is an idea inherent in most old countries, an idea for which Giovanni Saracinesca was certainly in no way responsible, seeing that it had been instilled into him from his boyhood.  Personally he would have preferred to live and die unmarried, rather than to take a wife as a matter of obligation towards his family; but seeing that he had never seriously loved any woman, he had acquired the habit of contemplating such a marriage as a probability, perhaps as an ultimate necessity, to be put off as long as possible, but to which he would at last yield with a good grace.

But the current of his life had been turned.  He was certainly not a romantic character, not a man who desired to experience the external sensations to be obtained by voluntarily creating dramatic events.  He loved action, and he had a taste for danger, but he had sought both in a legitimate way; he never desired to implicate himself in adventures where the feelings were concerned, and hitherto such experiences had