The evening seemed very long.
The late night came. Bruno set his door open, cold though it was; so that he should catch the earliest sound of footsteps. The boy, no doubt, he thought, would drive to the foot of the hill, and walk the rest.
It was a clear night after the rain of many days.
He could see the lights of the city in the plain fourteen miles or so away.
What was doing down there?
It seemed strange;—Signa being welcomed there, and he himself knowing nothing—only hearing a stray word or two by chance.
Once or twice in his younger days he had seen the city in gala over some great artist it delighted to honour; he could imagine the scene and fashion of it all well enough; he did not want to be noticed in it, only he would have liked to have been told, and to have gone down and seen it, quietly wrapped in his cloak, amongst the throng.
That was how he would have gone, had he been told.
He set the supper out as well as he could, and put wine ready, and the rose-tree in the midst. In the lamplight the little feast did not look so badly.
He wove wicker-work round some uncovered flasks by way of doing something. The bitter wind blew in; he did not mind that; his ear was strained to listen. Midnight passed. The wind had blown his lamp out. He lighted two great lanthorns, and hung them up against the doorposts; it was so dark upon the hills.