"Eternal; that's true! This is a long night."
"And the country is so desolate!" said Lucio Sabini. "But it doesn't matter; you will have delightful evenings where you are going."
"And you will as well," murmured Vittorio Lante, with a smile.
"Are you going to flirt too?"
"If there is nothing better to do," replied the other ambiguously.
"Better to do?"
"Yes."
Now they had passed the Maloja Kursaal, that hotel of four hundred rooms, so isolated amidst the black and bare mountains, on a desert spot before a deserted and motionless lake. Some of the windows of the caravanserai were illuminated, but no sound reached from them. They skirted the lake, where all the high shadows and the brightness of the sky were curiously reflected, as their tints changed from moment to moment.
"Do you want to get married, then?" asked Lucio Sabini, scrutinising his friend's face, but with a kindly glance.