'Thanks, I will.'
The Princess got out. The footman stood at the carriage door awaiting further orders.
'Where shall I take you?' Elena asked Sperelli, who had promptly taken the place of the Princess beside her.
'Far, far away——'
'Nonsense—tell me now,—home?' And without waiting for his answer she said—'To the Palazzo Zuccari, Trinità de' Monti.'
The footman closed the carriage door and they drove off down the Via Frattina leaving all the turmoil of the crowd behind them.
'Oh, Elena—after so long——' Andrea burst out, leaning down to gaze at the woman he so passionately desired and who had shrunk away from him into the shadow as if to avoid his contact.
The brilliant lights of the shop windows pierced the gloom in the carriage as they passed, and he saw on Elena's white face a slow alluring smile.
Still smiling thus, with a rapid movement she unwound the boa from her neck and cast it over Andrea's head like a lasso, and with that soft loop, all fragrant with the same perfume he had noticed in the blue fox of her coat, she drew the young man towards her and silently held up her lips to his.
Well did those two pairs of lips remember the rapture of by-gone days, those terrible and yet deliriously sweet meetings prolonged to anguish. They held their breath to taste the sweetness of that kiss to the full.