"I know exactly what you mean, my dear boy," said Corbario in a tone of
sympathy. "You see I am not very old myself, after all--barely
thirty--not quite, in fact. I could call myself twenty-nine if it were
not so much more respectable to be older."

"Yes. But do you mean to say that you feel just what I do now and then?"
Marcello asked the question in considerable surprise. "Do you really
know that sensation? That burning restlessness--that something like what
the earth must feel before a thunderstorm--like the air at this moment?"

Not a muscle of Folco's still face moved.

"Yes," he answered quietly. "I know it very well. It is nothing but the
sudden wish for a little harmless excitement, nothing else in the world,
my dear boy, and it is certainly nothing to be ashamed of. It does not
follow that it is at all convenient to yield to it, but we feel it
because we lead such a very quiet life."

"But surely, we are perfectly happy," observed Marcello.

"Perfectly, absolutely happy. I do not believe that there are any
happier people in the world than we three, your mother, you, and I. We
have not a wish unfulfilled."

"No, except that one, when it comes."

"And that does not count in my case," answered Folco. "You see I have
had a good deal of--'harmless excitement' in my life, and I know just
what it is like, and that it is quite possible to be perfectly happy