The train shrieked again, beginning to slacken speed.
"Here we are!" said Antonio; and Regina's recollections dissolved as the apparition of the house had dissolved a moment before.
After this, notwithstanding her resolution not to be upset, not to be surprised, but to make calm study of her own impressions, she became hopelessly bewildered and saw everything as through a veil.
Antonio was pulling the light luggage down from the rack; he overturned the bonnet-box containing the bride's beautiful white hat; she stooped to pick it up, flushed with dismay, then returned to the window and rearranged her cloak and fur collar. Lines of monstrous houses, orange against the velvety blue of the sky, fleeted by rapidly; the wind abated, the lamps became innumerable, golden, white, violet—their crude rays vanquishing the melancholy moonlight. The glare grew and grew, became magnificent, pervaded an enclosure into which the train rushed with deafening roar.
Rome!
Hundreds of intent egotistic faces, illuminated by the violet brilliance of the electric light, passed before Regina's agitated gaze. Here and there she distinguished a few figures, a lady with red hair, a man in a check suit, a pale girl with a picture hat, a bald gentleman, a raised stick, a fluttering handkerchief—but she saw nothing distinctly; she had a strange fancy that this unnamed alien crowd was a deputation sent to welcome her—not over-kindly—by the great city to which she was giving herself.
The carriage doors were thrown violently open, a babel of human voices resounded above the whistles and the throbbing of the engines; on the platform people were running about and jostling each other.
"Roma—a—a!"
"Porter—r—r!"
Antonio was collecting the hand luggage, but Regina stood gazing at the scene. Many smiling, curious, anxious persons were still standing in groups before the carriage doors; others had already escaped and were disappearing out of the station exit.