“Whenever you please, Giovanni.  Only it must be very quiet, and we will go straight to Saracinesca.  If you agree to those two things, it shall be as soon as you please.”

“Next week?  A week from Sunday?” asked Giovanni, eagerly.

“Yes—­a week from Sunday.  I would rather not go through the ordeal of a long engagement.  I cannot bear to have every one here, congratulating me from morning till night, as they insist upon doing.”

“I will send the people out to Saracinesca to-morrow,” said Giovanni, in great delight.  “They have been at work all winter, making the place respectable.”

“Not changing, I hope?” exclaimed Corona, who dearly loved the old grey walls.

“Only repairing the state apartments.  By the by, I met Gouache this evening.  He is going out with a company of Zouaves to hunt the brigands, if there really are any.”

“I hope he will not come near us,” answered Corona.  “I want to be all alone with you, Giovanni, for ever so long.  Would you not rather be alone for a little while?” she asked, looking up suddenly with a timid smile.  “Should I bore you very much?”

It is unnecessary to record Giovanni’s answer.  If Corona longed to be alone with him in the hills, Giovanni himself desired such a retreat still more.  To be out of the world, even for a month, seemed to him the most delightful of prospects, for he was weary of the city, of society, of everything save the woman he was about to marry.  Of her he could never tire; he could not imagine that in her company the days would ever seem long, even in old Saracinesca, among the grey rocks of the Sabines.  The average man is gregarious, perhaps; but in strong minds there is often a great desire for solitude, or at least for retirement, in the society of one sympathetic soul.  The instinct which bids such people leave the world for a time is never permanent, unless they become morbid.  It is a natural feeling; and a strong brain gathers strength from communing with itself or with its natural mate.  There are few great men who have not at one time or another withdrawn into solitude, and their retreat has generally been succeeded by a period of extraordinary activity.  Strong minds are often, at some time or another, exposed to doubt and uncertainty incomprehensible to a smaller intellect—­due, indeed, to that very breadth of view which contemplates the same idea from a vast number of sides.  To a man so endowed, the casting-vote of some one whom he loves, and with whom he almost unconsciously sympathises, is sometimes necessary to produce action, to direct the faculties, to guide the overflowing flood of his thought into the mill-race of life’s work.  Without a certain amount of prejudice to determine the resultant of its forces, many a fine intellect would expend its power in burrowing among its own labyrinths, unrecognised, misunderstood, unheard by the working-day world without.  For the working-day world never lacks prejudice to direct its working.