The rain was passing over; patches of blue were beginning to appear between the great banks of white cloud; a shaft of sunshine made the wet flags glitter.
Flooded by this pale rose splendour, her magnificent furs falling in straight symmetrical folds to her feet, Elena was very beautiful.

As Andrea caught a glimpse of the inside of her brougham, all cosily lined with white satin like a little boudoir, with its shining silver foot-warmer for the comfort of her small feet, his dream of the preceding evening came back to him--'Oh, to be there with her alone, and feel the warm perfume of her breath mingling with the violets--behind the mist-dimmed windows through which one hardly sees the muddy streets, the gray houses, the dull crowd!' But she only bowed slightly to him at the door, without even a smile, and the next moment the carriage had flashed away in the direction of the Palazzo Barberini, leaving the young man with a dim sense of depression and heartache.
She only said 'perhaps,' so it was quite possible that she would not be at the Palazzo Farnese that evening.

What should he do then?
The thought that he might not see her was intolerable; already every hour he passed far from her weighed heavily on his spirits.

'Am I then so deeply in love with her already ?' he asked himself.

His spirit seemed imprisoned within a circle in which the phantoms of all his sensations in presence of this woman surged and wheeled around him.