But with him such moods were of brief duration; he suddenly quitted the table, and went out into the night air.
The late moon was rising, amber-coloured on a sky of dusky azure.

He walked from the garden, across the road, and towards the ruins of the Amphitheatre, which lie some distance apart from the Pompeian streets that have been unearthed; he passed beneath an arch, and stood looking down into the dark hollow so often thronged with citizens of Latin speech.

Small wonder that Benvenuto's necromancer could evoke his myriads of flitting ghosts in the midnight Colosseum; here too it needed but to stand for a few minutes in the dead stillness, and the air grew alive with mysterious presences, murmurous with awful whisperings.

Mallard enjoyed it for awhile, but at length turned away abruptly, feeling as if a cold hand had touched him.
As he re-entered the inn-precincts, he heard voices still uproarious in the dining-room; but he had no intention of going among them again.

His bedroom was one of a row which opened immediately upon the garden.