In a few seconds a small flame appeared, and soon the fire was burning tolerably.
"How clever you are!" Aurora laughed quietly.
Marcello rose and sat upon a low chair, instead of on the sofa beside her.

For a while neither spoke, and he looked about him rather awkwardly, while Aurora watched the flames.

It was long since he had been in the room, and it looked shabby after the rather excessive magnificence of the villa on the Janiculum, for which Corbario's taste had been largely responsible.

It was just a little shabby, too, compared with the dainty simplicity of the small house in Trastevere.

The furniture, the carpets, and the curtains were two years older than when he had seen them last, and had been unkindly used by the tenants to whom the Contessa had sub-let the apartment in order to save the rent.
Marcello missed certain pretty things that he had been used to see formerly, some bits of old Saxe, a little panel by an early master, a chiselled silver cup in which there always used to be flowers.