Two men were sitting side by side on a stone bench in the forgotten garden of the Arcadian Society, in Rome; and it was in early spring, not long ago. Few people, Romans or strangers, ever find their way to that lonely and beautiful spot beyond the Tiber, niched in a hollow of the Janiculum below San Pietro in Montorio, where Beatrice Cenci sleeps. The Arcadians were men and women who loved poetry in an artificial time, took names of shepherds and shepherdesses, rhymed as best they could, met in pleasant places to recite their verses, and played that the world was young, and gentle, and sweet, and unpoisoned, just when it had declined to one of its recurring periods of vicious old age. The Society did not die with its times, and it still exists, less sprightly, less ready to mask in pastorals, but rhyming, meeting, and reciting verses now and then, in the old manner, though rarely in the old haunts. Even now fresh inscriptions in honour of the Arcadians are set into the stuccoed walls of the little terraced garden under the hill.

It is very peaceful there. Above, the concave wall of the small house of meeting looks down upon circular tiers of brick seats, and beyond these there are bushes and a little fountain. To the right and left, symmetrical walks lead down in two wide curves to the lower levels, where the water falls again into a basin in a shaded grotto, and rises the third time in another fountain. An ancient stone-pine tree springs straight upwards, spreading out lovely branches. There are bushes again and a magnolia, and a Japanese medlar, and there is moss. The stone mouldings of the fountains are rich with the green tints of time. The air is softly damp, smelling of leaves and flowers; there are corners into which the sunlight never shines, little mysteries of perpetual shade that are full of sadness in winter, but in summer repeat the fanciful confidences of a delicious and imaginary past.

The Sister who had let in the two visitors had left them to themselves, and had gone back to the little convent door; for she was the portress, and therefore a small judge of character in her way, and she understood that the two gentlemen were not like the other half-dozen strangers who came every year to see the garden, and went away after ten minutes, dropping half a franc into her hand for the Sisters, and not even lifting their hats to her as she let them out. These two evidently knew the place; they spoke to each other as intimate friends do; they had come to enjoy the peace and silence for an hour, and they would neither carry off the flowers from the magnolia tree, as some did, nor scrawl their names in pencil on the stucco. Therefore they might safely be left to their own leisure and will.

The men were friends, as the portress had guessed; they were very unlike, and their unlikeness was in part the reason of their friendship. The one was squarely built, of average height, a man of action at every point, with bold blue eyes that could be piercing, a rugged Roman head, prominent at the brows, short reddish hair and pointed beard, great jaw and cheek-bones, a tanned and freckled skin. He sat leaning back, one leg crossed over the other, the knee that was upper-most pressing against the stout stick he held across it, and the big veins swelled on his hands and wrists. He was a sailor, and a born fighting man; and in ten years of service he had managed to find himself in every affair that had concerned Italy in the remotest degree, in Africa, in China, and elsewhere. He was now at home on leave, expecting immediate promotion. He bore a historical name; he was called Lamberto Lamberti.

His companion sat with folded arms and bent head, a rather dark young man with deep-set grey eyes that often looked black, a thoughtful face, a grave mouth that could smile suddenly and almost strangely, with a child's sweet frankness, and yet with a look that was tender and human—the smile of a man who understands the meaning of life and yet does not despise it. Most people would have taken him for a man of leisure, probably given to reading or the cultivation of some artistic taste. Guido d'Este was one of those Italians who are content to survive from a very beautiful past without joining the frantic rush for a very problematic future. But there was more in him than a love of books and a knowledge of pictures; for he was a dreamer, and there are dreams better worth dreaming than many deeds are worth the doing.

"I sometimes wonder what would have happened to you and me," he said, after there had been a long pause, "if we had been obliged to live each other's lives."

"We should both have been bored to extinction," answered Lamberti, without hesitating.

"I suppose so," assented Guido, and relapsed into silence.

He was very glad that he was not condemned to the life of a naval officer, to the perpetual motion of active service, to the narrow quarters of a lieutenant on a modern man-of-war, to the daily companionship of a dozen or eighteen other officers with whom he could certainly not have an idea in common. It would be a detestable thing to be sent at a moment's notice from one end of the world to the other, from heat to cold, from cold to heat, through all sorts of weather, only to be a part of an organisation, a wheel in a machine, a pawn in some one's game of chess. He had been on board a line-of-battle ship once to see his friend off, and had mentally noted the discomfort. There was nothing in the cabin but a bunk built over a chest of drawers, a narrow transom, a wash-stand that disappeared into a recess when pushed back, an exiguous table fastened to a bulkhead, and one camp-stool. There was no particular means of ventilation, and the place smelt of cold iron, paint, and soft soap. Yet his friend had been about to live at least six months in this cell, which would have been condemned as too narrow in an ordinarily well-managed prison.

Nevertheless, it would be pleasant in itself, no doubt, to be a living part of what most men only read about, to really know what fighting meant, to be one of the few who are invariably chosen first for missions of danger and difficulty. Besides, Guido d'Este was just now in a very difficult situation, which might become dangerous, and from which he saw no immediate means of escape; and, for once in his life, he almost envied his friend his simple career, in which nothing seemed to be required of a man but courage and obedience.

"I suppose I should be bored," he said again, after a short and thoughtful pause, "but I would rather be bored than live the life I am living."

The sailor looked at him sharply a moment, and instantly understood that Guido had brought him to the little garden in order to tell him something of importance without risk of interruption.

"Have you had more trouble with that horrible old woman?" he asked roughly.

"Yes. She is draining the life out of me. She will ruin me in the end."

Guido did not look up as he spoke, and he slowly tapped the hard earth with the toe of his shoe. He felt very helpless, and he shook his head over his misfortunes, which seemed great.

"That comes of being connected with royalty," said Lamberti, in the same rough tone.

"Is it my fault?" asked Guido, with a melancholy smile.

The sailor snorted discontentedly, and changed his position.

"What can I do?" he asked presently. "Tell me."

"Nothing."

"If I were only rich!"

"My dear friend," said Guido, "she demands a million of francs!"

"There are men who have fifty. Would a hundred thousand francs be of any use?"

"Not the least. Besides, that is all you have."

"What would that matter?" asked Lamberti.

Guido looked up at last, for he knew that the words were true and earnest.

"Thank you," he answered. "I know you would do that for me. But it would not be of any use. Things have gone too far."

"Shall I go to her and talk the matter over? I believe I could frighten her into justice. After all, she has no legal claim upon you."

Guido shook his head.

"That is not the question," he answered. "She never pretends that her right is legal, for it is not. On the contrary, she says it is a question of honour, that I have lost her money for her in speculations, and that I am bound to restore it to her. It is true that I only did with it exactly what she wished, and what she insisted that I should do, against my own judgment. She knows that."

"But then, I do not see—"

"She also knows that I cannot prove it," interrupted Guido, "and as she is perfectly unscrupulous, she will use everything against me to make out that I have deliberately cheated her out of the money."

"But it cannot make so much difference to her, after all," objected Lamberti. "She must have an immense fortune somewhere."

"She is a miser, in spite of that sudden attack of the gaming fever. Money is the only passion of her life."

"Possibly, though I doubt it. There is Monsieur Leroy, you know."

Lamberti spoke the name with contempt, but Guido said nothing, for, after all, the high and mighty lady about whom they were talking was his father's sister, and he preferred not to talk scandal about her, even with his intimate friend.

"If matters grow worse," said Lamberti, "there are at least the worthless securities in her name, to prove that you acted for her."

"You are mistaken. That is the worst of it. Everything was done in my name, for she would not let her own appear. She used to give me the money in cash, telling me exactly what to do with it, and I brought her the broker's accounts."

"I daresay she made you sign receipts for the sums she gave you," laughed Lamberti.

"Yes, she did."

Lamberti sat up suddenly and stared at his friend. Such folly was hardly to be believed.

"She is capable of saying that she lent you the money on your promise!" he cried.

"That is exactly what she threatens to do," answered Guido d'Este, dejectedly. "As I cannot possibly pay it, she can force me to do one of two things."

"What things?"

"Either to disappear from honourable society and begin life somewhere else, or else to make an end of myself. And she will do it. I have felt for more than a year that she means to ruin me."

Lamberti set his teeth, and stared at the stone-pine. If Guido had not been just the man he was, sensitive to morbidness where his honour was concerned, the situation might have seemed less desperate. If his aunt, her Serene Highness the Princess Anatolie, had not been a monster of avarice, selfishness, and vindictiveness, there would perhaps have been some hope of moving her. As it was, matters looked ill, and to make them worse there was the well-known fact that Guido had formerly played high and had lost considerable sums at cards. It would be easy to make society believe that he had paid his debts, which had always been promptly settled, with money which the Princess had intrusted to him for investment.

"What possible object can she have in ruining you?" asked Lamberti, presently.

"I cannot guess," Guido answered after another short pause. "I have little enough left as it is, except the bare chance of inheriting something, some day, from my brother, who likes me about as much as my aunt does, and is not bound to leave me a penny."

"But, after all," argued Lamberti, "you are the only heir left to either of them."

"I suppose so," assented Guido in an uncertain tone.

"What do you mean?"

"Nothing—it does not matter. Of course," he continued quietly, "this may go on for some time, but it can only end in one way, sooner or later. I shall be lucky if I am only reduced to starvation."

"You might marry an heiress," suggested Lamberti, as a last resource.

"And pay my aunt out of my wife's fortune? No. I will not do that."

"Of course not. But I should think that if ever an honest man could be tempted to do such a thing, it would be in some such case as yours."

"Perhaps to save his father from ruin, or his mother from starvation," said Guido. "I could understand it then; but not to save himself. Besides, no heiress in our world would marry me, for I have nothing to offer."

Lamberti smiled incredulously. He was not a cynic, because he believed in action; but his faith in the disinterested simplicity of mankind was not strong. He had also some experience of the world, and was quite ready to admit that a marriageable heiress might fairly expect an equivalent for the fortune she was to bring her husband. Yet he wholly rejected the statement that Guido d'Este had nothing of social value to offer, merely because he was now a poor man and had never been a very rich one. Guido had neither lands nor money, and bore no title, it was true; and could but just live like a gentleman on the small allowance that was paid him yearly according to his father's will. But there was no secret about his birth, and he was closely related to several of the reigning houses of Europe. His father had been one of the minor sovereigns dethroned in the revolutions of the nineteenth century; late in life, a widower, the ex-king had married a beautiful young girl of no great family, who had died in giving birth to Guido. The marriage had of course been morganatic, though perfectly legal, and Guido neither bore the name of his father's royal race, nor could he ever lay claim to the succession, in the utterly improbable event of a restoration. But he was half brother to the childless man, nearly forty years older than himself, whose faithful friends still called him "your Majesty" in private; he was nephew to the extremely authentic Princess Anatolie, and he was first cousin to at least one king who had held his own. In the eyes of an heiress in search of social position as an equivalent for her millions, all this would more than compensate for the fact that his visiting card bore the somewhat romantic and unlikely name, "Guido d'Este," without any title or explanation whatever.

But apart from the sordid consideration of values to be given and received, Guido was young, good-looking if not handsome, and rather better gifted than most men; he had reached the age of twenty-seven without having what society is pleased to call a past—in other words without ever having been the chief actor in a social tragedy, comedy, or farce; and finally, though he had once been fond of cards, he had now entirely given up play. If he had been a little richer, he could almost have passed for a model young man in the eyes of the exacting and prudent parent of marriageable daughters. Judging from the Princess Anatolie, it was probable that he resembled his mother's family more than his father's.

For all these reasons his friend thought that, if he chose, he might easily find an heiress who would marry him with enthusiasm; but, being his friend, Lamberti was very glad that he rejected the idea.

The two were not men who ever talked together of their principles, though they sometimes spoke of their beliefs and differed about them. Belief is usually absolute, but principle is always a matter of conscience, and the conscience is a part of the mixed self in which soul and mind and matter are all involved together. Men born in the same surroundings and brought up in the same way generally hold to the same principles as guides in life, and show the same abhorrence for the sins that are accounted dishonourable, and the same indulgence for those not condemned by the code of honour, not even admitting discussion upon such points. But the same men may have very different opinions about spiritual matters.

Eliminating the vulgar average of society, there remain always a certain number who, while possibly holding even more divergent beliefs than most people, agree more precisely, or disagree more essentially, about matters of conscience, either stretching or contracting the code of honour according to their own temper, and especially according to the traditions of their own most immediate surroundings. Other conditions being favourable, it seems as if men whose consciences are most alike should be the best fitted for each other's friendship, no matter what they may think or believe about religion.

This was certainly the case with Guido d'Este and Lamberto Lamberti, and they simultaneously dismissed, as detestable, dishonourable, and unworthy, the mere thought that Guido should try to marry an heiress, with a view to satisfying the outrageous claims of his ex-royal aunt, the Princess Anatolie.

"In simpler times," observed Lamberti, who liked to recall the middle ages, "we should have poisoned the old woman."

Guido did not smile.

"Without meaning to do her an injustice," he answered, "I think it much more probable that she would have poisoned me."

"With the help of Monsieur Leroy, she might have succeeded."

At the thought of the man whom he so cordially detested, Lamberti's blue eyes grew hard, and his upper lip tightened a little, just showing his teeth under his red moustache. Guido looked at him and smiled in his turn.

"There are your ferocious instincts again," he said; "you wish you could kill him."

"I do," answered Lamberti, simply.

He rose from his seat and stretched himself a little, as some big dogs always do after the preliminary growl at an approaching enemy.

"I think Monsieur Leroy is the most repulsive human being I ever saw," he said. "I am not exactly a sensitive person, but it makes me very uncomfortable to be near him. He once gave me his hand, and I had to take it. It felt like a live toad. How old is that man?"

"He must be forty," said Guido, "but he is wonderfully well preserved. Any one would take him for five-and-thirty."

"It is disgusting!" Lamberti kicked a pebble away, as he stood.

"He looked just as he does now, when I was seventeen," observed Guido.

"The creature paints his face. I am sure of it."

"No. I have seen him drenched in a shower, when he had no umbrella. The rain ran down his cheeks, but the colour did not change."

"It is all the more disgusting," retorted Lamberti, illogically, but with strong emphasis.

Guido rose from his seat rather wearily. As he stood up, he was much taller than his friend, who had seemed the larger man while both were seated.

"I am glad that we have talked this over," he said. "Not that talking can help matters, of course. It never does. But I wanted you to know just how things stand, in case anything should happen to me."

Lamberti turned rather sharply.

"In case what should happen to you?" he asked, his eyes hardening.

"I am very tired of it all," Guido answered, "I have nothing to live for, and I am being driven straight to disgrace and ruin without any fault of my own. I daresay that some day I may—well, you know what I mean."

"What?"

"I should not care to exile myself to South America. I am not fit for that sort of life."

"Well?"

"There is the other alternative," said Guido, with a tuneless little laugh. "When life is intolerable, what can be simpler than to part with it?"

Lamberti's strong hand was already on his friend's arm, and tightened energetically.

"Do you believe in God?" he asked abruptly.

"No. At least, I think not."

"I do," said Lamberti, with conviction, "and I shall not let you make away with yourself if I can help it."

He loosed his hold, thrust his hands into his pockets, and looked as if he wished he could fight somebody or something.

"A man who kills himself to escape his troubles is a coward," he said.

Guido made a gesture of indifference.

"You know very well that I am not a coward," he said.

"You will be, the day you are afraid to go on living," returned his friend. "If you kill yourself, I shall think you are an arrant coward, and I shall be sorry I ever knew you."

Guido looked at him incredulously.

"Are you in earnest?" he asked.

"Yes."

There was no mistaking the look in Lamberti's hard blue eyes. Guido faced him.

"Do you think that every man who commits suicide is a coward?"

"If it is to escape his own troubles, yes. A man who gives his life for his country, his mother, or his wife, is not a coward, though he may kill himself with his own hand."

"The Church would call him a suicide."

"I do not know, in all cases," said Lamberti. "I am not a theologian, and as the Church means nothing to you, it would be of no use if I were."

"Why do you say that the Church means nothing to me?" Guido asked.

"Since you are an atheist, what meaning can it possibly have?"

"It means the whole tradition of morality by which we live, and our fathers lived. Even the code of honour, which is a little out of shape nowadays, is based on Christianity, and was once the rule of a good life, the best rule in the days when it grew up."

"I daresay. Even the code of honour, degenerate as it is, and twist it how you will, cannot give you an excuse for killing yourself when you have always behaved honourably, or for running away from the enemy simply because you are tired of fighting and will not take the trouble to go on."

"Perhaps you are right," Guido answered. "But the whole question is not worth arguing. What is life, after all, that we should attach any importance to it?"

"It is all you have, and you only have it once."

"Who knows? Perhaps we may come back to it again, hundreds and hundreds of times. There are more people in the world who believe that than there are Christians."

"If that is what you believe," retorted Lamberti, "you must believe that the sooner you leave life, the sooner you will come back to it."

"Possibly. But there is a chance that it may not be true, and that everything may end here. That one chance may be worth taking."

"There is a chance that a man who deserts from his ship may not be caught. That is not an argument in favour of desertion."

Guido laughed carelessly.

"You have a most unpleasant way of naming things," he said. "Shall we go? It is growing late, and I have promised to see my aunt before dinner."

"Will there be any one else there?" asked Lamberti.

"Why? Did you think of going with me?"

"I might. It is a long time since I have called. I think I shall be a little more assiduous in future."

"It is not gay, at my aunt's," observed Guido. "Monsieur Leroy will be there. You may have to shake hands with him!"

"You do not seem anxious that I should go with you," laughed Lamberti.

Guido said nothing for a moment, and seemed to be weighing the question, as if it might be of some importance. Lamberti afterwards remembered the slight hesitation.

"By all means come," Guido said, when he had made up his mind.

He glanced once more at the place, for he liked it, and it was pleasant to carry away pictures of what one liked, even of a bit of neglected old garden with a stone-pine in the middle, clearly cut out against the sky. He wondered idly whether he should ever come again—whether, after all, it would be cowardly to go to sleep with the certainty of not waking, and whether he should find anything beyond, or not.

The world looked too familiar to him to be interesting, as if he had known it too long, and he vaguely wished that he could change it, and desire to stay in it for its own sake; and just then it occurred to him that every man carries with him the world in which he must live, the stage and the scenery for his own play. It would be absurd to pretend, he thought, that his own material world was the same as Lamberti's, even when the latter was at home. They knew the same people, heard the same talk, ate the same things, looked on the same sights, breathed the same air. There was perhaps no sacrifice worthy of honourable men which either of them would not make for the other. Yet, to Guido d'Este, life seemed miserably indifferent where it did not seem a real calamity, while to Lamberti every second of it was worth fighting for, because it was worth enjoying.

Guido looked at his friend's tanned neck and sturdy shoulders, following him to the door, and he realised more clearly than ever before that he was not of the same race. He felt the satiety bred in many generations of destiny's spoilt and flattered sons; the absence of anything like a grasping will, caused by the too easy fulfilment of every careless wish; the over-critical sense that guesses at hidden imperfection, the cruelly unerring instinct of a taste too tired to enjoy and yet too fine to be deceived.

Lamberti turned at the door and saw his face.

"What are you thinking about?"

"I was envying you," Guido murmured. "You are glad to be alive."

Lamberti made rather an impatient gesture, but said nothing. The Sister who had admitted the two opened the little iron door for them to go out. She was a small woman, with a worn face and kind brown eyes, one of the half-dozen who live in the little convent and work among the children of the very poor in that quarter. Both men had taken out money.

"For the poor children, if you please," said Guido, placing his offering in the nun's hand.

"And tell them to pray for a man who is in trouble," added Lamberti, giving her money.

She looked at him curiously, thinking, perhaps, that he meant himself. Then she gravely bent her head.

"I thank you very much," she said.

The small iron door closed with a rusty clang, and the friends began to descend the steep way that leads down from the Porta San Pancrazio to the Via Garibaldi.

"Why did you say that to the nun?" asked Guido.

"Are you past praying for?" enquired Lamberti, with a careless and good-natured laugh.

"It is not like you," said Guido.

"I do not pretend to be more consistent than other people, you know. Are you going directly to the Princess's?"

"No. I must go home first. The old lady would never forgive me if I went to see her without a silk hat in my hand."

"Then I suppose I must dress, too," said Lamberti. "I will leave you at your door, and drive home, and we can meet at your aunt's."

"Very well."

They walked down the street and found a cab, scarcely speaking again until they parted at Guido's door.

He lived alone in a quiet apartment of the Palazzo Farnese, overlooking the Via Giulia and the river beyond. The afternoon sun was still streaming through the open windows of his sitting room, and the warm breeze came with it.

"There are two notes, sir," said his servant, who had followed him. "The one from the Princess is urgent. The man wished to wait for you, but I sent him away."

"That was right," said Guido, taking the letters from the salver. "Get my things ready. I have visits to make."

The man went out and shut the door. He was a Venetian, and had been in the navy, where he had served Lamberti during the affair in China. Lamberti had recommended him to his friend.

Guido remained standing while he opened the note. The first was an engraved invitation to a garden party from a lady he scarcely knew. It was the first he had ever received from her, and he was not aware that she ever asked people to her house. The second was from his aunt, begging him to come to tea that afternoon as he had promised, for a very particular reason, and asking him to let her know beforehand if anything made it impossible. It began with "Dearest Guido" and was signed "Your devoted aunt, Anatolie." She was evidently very anxious that he should come, for he was generally her "dear nephew," and she was his "affectionate aunt."

The handwriting was fine and hard to read, though it was regular. Some of the letters were quite unlike those of most people, and many of them were what experts call "blind."

Guido d'Este read the note through twice, with an expression of dislike, and then tore it up. He threw the invitation upon some others that lay in a chiselled copper dish on his writing table, lit a cigarette, and looked out of the window. His aunt's note was too affectionate and too anxious to bode well, and he was tempted to write that he could not go. It would be pleasant to end the afternoon with a book and a cup of tea, and then to dine alone and dream away the evening in soothing silence.

But he had promised to go; and, moreover, nothing was of any real importance at all, nothing whatsoever, from the moment of beginning life to the instant of leaving it. He therefore dressed and went out again.