"Eight days."
"Eight. Really? Are you sure?"
"I have counted them," she said, turning away her head, as if to look at the sea.
"I'm sure that's a great compliment." And he bowed gallantly.
"It wasn't a compliment. It was affection, it was gratitude."
"Good. I see you're in a better frame of mind. I'll call to-morrow."
When he had left them, Anna and Stella went on towards the Mergellina, walking more rapidly than before. Anna kept looking at the sea, with a slight smile upon her lips, a new colour in her cheeks. She buried her hands in her muff. Had he not pressed one of those hands at parting with her? Now and then she would look backwards, as if expecting to see him again; it was the hour of the promenade. She did see him again, indeed; but this time he was in a carriage, a smart trap of the Viennese pattern, driven dashingly by Luigi Caracciolo.
She saw them approaching from afar, swiftly. She bowed and smiled to both of them. Her smile was luminous with happiness; and Luigi Caracciolo imagined himself the cause of it, and drove more slowly; and Cesare Dias was pleased by it, for he took it as an earnest of her better frame of mind.
When Stella Martini asked her, "Shall we continue our walk or go home?" she answered, "Let us go home."
She had seen him; she had told him how anxiously she had counted the days of his absence; he had promised that he would call to-morrow. She had seen him again, and had smiled upon him. That was enough. She mustn't ask too much of Providence in a single day.