While talking with more or less
indifference about the chances of securing a suitable apartment for the
winter, Orsino listened with an odd sensation of pleasure to every tone
of his companion's voice and watched every changing expression of the
striking face. He wondered whether he were not perhaps destined to love
her sincerely as he had already loved her in a boyish, capricious
fashion which would no longer be natural to him now. But for the present
he was sure that he did not love her, and that he desired nothing but
her sympathy for himself, and to feel sympathy for her. Those were the
words he used, and he did not explain them to his own intelligence in
any very definite way. He was conscious, indeed, that they meant more
than formerly, but the same was true of almost everything that came into
his life, and he did not therefore attach any especial importance to the
fact. He was altogether much more in earnest than when he had first met
Maria Consuelo; he was capable of deeper feeling, of stronger
determination and of more decided action in all matters, and though he
did not say so to himself he was none the less aware of the change.
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