The carriage came
out, passed through the garden and drove away towards the Via Rasella;
it was empty.
It wanted but two or three minutes to midnight and she had not come!
It struck the hour. A bitter pang smote the heart of the deluded
watcher. She was not coming.
Unable to see any cause for her having missed the appointment he turned
upon her in sudden anger; he even had a suspicion that she might have
wished to inflict a humiliation, a punishment upon him, or else that she
had merely indulged in a whim in order to inflame his desire afresh. The
next moment he called to the coachman--
'Piazza del Quirinale.'
He yielded to the attraction of Maria Ferres; he abandoned himself once
more to the vaguely tender sentiment which, ever since his visit in the
afternoon, had left, as it were, a perfume in his soul and suggested to
him thoughts and images of poetic beauty. The recent disappointment,
proving, as he considered, Elena's malice and indifference, urged him
more strongly than ever towards the love and goodness of the other. His
regret for the loss of so beautiful a night increased, under the
influence of the vision he had dreamed just now. And, truth to tell, it
was one of the most enchanting nights Rome had ever known; one of those
spectacles that oppress the human soul with deep sadness, because they
transcend all power of admiration, all possibility of human expression.
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