And Signor Odoardo, gently detaching himself from his daughter's embrace, rises and rings for the lamp. Then, instinctively, he glances once more towards the window. In the opposite house all is dark, and Signora Evelina's profile is no longer outlined against the pane. The weather is still threatening, and now and then a snowflake falls. The servant closes the shutters and draws the curtains, so that no profane gaze may penetrate into the domestic sanctuary.
"We had better dine in here," Signor Odoardo says. "The dining-room must be as cold as Greenland."
Doretta, meanwhile, is convulsing the kitchen with the noisy announcement of the impending journey. At first she is thought to be joking, but when she establishes the fact that she is speaking seriously, it is respectfully pointed out to her that the master of the house must be crazy. To start on a journey in the depth of winter, and in such weather! If at least they were to wait for a fine day!
But what does Doretta care for the comments of the kitchen? She is beside herself with joy. She sings, she dances about the room, and breaks off every moment or two to give her father a kiss. Then she pours out the fulness of her emotion upon the cat Melanio and the doll Nini, promising the latter to bring her back a new frock from Milan.
At dinner she eats little and talks incessantly of the journey, asking again and again what time it is, and at what time they are to start.
"Are you afraid of missing the train?" Signor Odoardo asks with a smile.
And yet, though he dissembles his impatience, it is as great as hers.
He longs to go away, far away. Perhaps he may not return until spring.
He orders his luggage packed for an absence of two months.
Doretta goes to bed early, but all night long she tosses about under the bed-clothes, waking her nurse twenty times to ask: "Is it time to get up?"
Signor Odoardo, too, is awake when the man-servant comes to call him the next morning at six o'clock.
"What sort of a day is it?"