She felt that he was rousing in her something which had been sleeping hitherto, and that in that moment a hazy dream was changing into a form more and more definite, more pleasing, more beautiful.
Meanwhile the sun had passed the Tiber long since, and had sunk low over the Janiculum.

On the motionless cypresses ruddy light was falling, and the whole atmosphere was filled with it.

Lygia raised on Vinicius her blue eyes as if roused from sleep; and he, bending over her with a prayer quivering in his eyes, seemed on a sudden, in the reflections of evening, more beautiful than all men, than all Greek and Roman gods whose statues she had seen on the facades of temples.

And with his fingers he clasped her arm lightly just above the wrist and asked,--"Dost thou not divine what I say to thee, Lygia ?" "No," whispered she as answer, in a voice so low that Vinicius barely heard it.
But he did not believe her, and, drawing her hand toward him more vigorously, he would have drawn it to his heart, which, under the influence of desire roused by the marvellous maiden, was beating like a hammer, and would have addressed burning words to her directly had not old Aulus appeared on a path set in a frame of myrtles, who said, while approaching them,--"The sun is setting; so beware of the evening coolness, and do not trifle with Libitina." "No," answered Vinicius; "I have not put on my toga yet, and I do not feel the cold." "But see, barely half the sun's shield is looking from behind the hill.
That is a sweet climate of Sicily, where people gather on the square before sunset and take farewell of disappearing Phoebus with a choral song." And, forgetting that a moment earlier he had warned them against Libitina, he began to tell about Sicily, where he had estates and large cultivated fields which he loved.

He stated also that it had come to his mind more than once to remove to Sicily, and live out his life there in quietness.