They were left alone in the Piazza Barberini. The stream of the fountain, tall and translucent, shone brightly in the moonlight.
'Shall we walk a little?' she said. 'It was suffocating in the ballroom.'
He offered her an arm, determined to show surprise at nothing. They went along the Via Sistina, the great thoroughfare which looks so aristocratic by day and so ghostly at night. She nestled up to him as though she was cold and fearsome, as if she pretended to be small and wanted his protection. Nevertheless, she was strong and tall in her black cloak, and under the hood where her eyes were sparkling. And that person and those eyes had the peculiar quality of magnetism—the violent fascination that stirs the senses. Again Francesco Sangiorgio felt as he had in her drawing-room, when she had so ruthlessly cast love into contempt. The sensation was profound and sharp, without any sweetness whatever—a revulsion, a storm, a sort of inebriation.
'How quiet it is!' she observed, in a voice slightly a-tremble, which shook every nerve in Sangiorgio's body.
'Say something else,' he whispered.
'What?' she asked, leaning against his shoulder.
'Anything, anything—I like your voice so much!'
But the Countess Fiammanti made no answer. They had arrived at the little square of the Trinità dei Monti. The obelisk stood erect in the bright moonlight, and its tall, slender shadow was imprinted on the wall of the church. The rising road, leading to the Villa Medici and the Pincio, was quite lustrous. They bent over the high parapet of the square, whence so many melancholy visitors have gazed upon Rome in the hours of twilight. But Rome was very dimly visible, shrouded in a white, moon-washed vapour, which almost seemed a continuation of the sky, a slant of the horizon covering houses, bell-towers, and cupolas.
'One can see nothing. What a pity!' exclaimed Donna Elena. And, taking hold of Sangiorgio's arm rather forcibly, she led him to a narrow stair in front of the Trinità—not the stair with two balusters to the church, but the steps going up to the convent, where the monks and the children they are educating live together. This stairway has a little landing before the door, and a railing. Donna Elena made Sangiorgio go up there.
'Shall we knock at the convent?' she asked him, as if trying the iron chain. 'We are two frozen pilgrims begging for shelter!'