Then I shall be happy." Marcello would laugh a little, and then he would look grave and thoughtful, for he had not forgotten Aurora, and sometimes wondered what she was doing, as a young man does who is losing his hold upon himself, and on the things in which he has always believed.

He who has never lived through such times and outlived them, knows neither the world nor himself.
Marcello wondered whether Aurora would ever meet Regina face to face, and what would happen if he were called upon to choose between the two.
He would choose Regina, he said to himself, when he was going down the steep way from the villa to the little house, eager for her touch, her voice, her breath, and feeling in his pocket the key that opened the garden gate.

But when the hours had passed, and he slowly walked up the road under the great plane-trees, in the cool of the late evening, glancing at the distant lights of Rome beyond the Tiber, and dimly conscious that something was still unsatisfied, then he hesitated and he remembered his boyish love, and fancied that if he met Aurora in the way they would stand still, each finding the other in the other's eyes, and silently kiss, as they had kissed long ago.

Yet, with the thought, he felt shame, and he blushed, alone there under the plane-trees.
But Aurora had never come back to Rome, and the small apartment that overlooked the Forum of Trajan had other tenants.

It was strange that the Contessa and her daughter should not have returned, and sometimes Marcello felt a great longing to see them.