For he possessed a strong attraction for me--we had much the same tastes, we shared the same sympathies, in short, I desired nothing better than his confidence and companionship.
In this world no one, however harmless, is allowed to continue happy.
Fate--or caprice--cannot endure to see us monotonously at rest.
Something perfectly trivial--a look, a word, a touch, and lo! a long chain of old associations is broken asunder, and the peace we deemed so deep and lasting in finally interrupted.

This change came to me, as surely as it comes to all.

One day--how well I remember it!--one sultry evening toward the end of May, 1881, I was in Naples.

I had passed the afternoon in my yacht, idly and slowly sailing over the bay, availing myself of what little wind there was.

Guido's absence (he had gone to Rome on a visit of some weeks' duration) rendered me somewhat of a solitary, and as my light craft ran into harbor, I found myself in a pensive, half-uncertain mood, which brought with it its own depression.
The few sailors who manned my vessel dispersed right and left as soon as they were landed--each to his own favorite haunts of pleasure or dissipation--but I was in no humor to be easily amused.