the villa, chose solitary going. Why, he
did not know, save that he felt aching satiety.

Here in the streets were half-lights, afterglow from the sunken sun
and smoky torches. The latter increased in number, the oil-lamps,
great and small, were lit, the tapers of various qualities and
thicknesses. Where there were open spaces vast heaps of seasoned wood
now flaming caused processions of light and shadow among ruins,
against old triumphal arches, against churches and dwellings old,
half-old, and new, lived in, chanted in still, intact and usable.
Above was star-sown night, but Rome lay under a kobold roof of her own
lighting. Noise held grating sway, mere restless motion enthroned with
her. Worlds of drunken grasshoppers in endless scorched plains! The
masks seemed now demoniac, less beauty than ugliness.

Ian found himself on the Quirinal, in the great ragged space dominated
by the Colossi. Here burned a bonfire huge enough to make Plutonian
day, and here upon the fringes of that light he encountered a carnival
brawl, and became presently involved in it. He wore a domino striped
black and silver, and a small black mask, a black hat with wide brim
and a long, curling silver feather. He was tall, broad-shouldered,
noticeable.... The quarrel had started among unmasked peasants, then
had swooped in a numerous band dressed as ravens. Light-fingered
gentry, inconspicuously clad, aided in provoking misunderstanding that
should shake for them the orchard trees. A company of wine-bibbers
with monstrous, leering masks, staggering from a side-street, fell
into the whirlpool. With vociferation and blows the whole pulled here
and there, the original cause of the falling out buried now in a host
of new causes. Ian, caught in an eddy, turned to make way out of it. A
peasant woman, there with a group from some rock village, received a
chance buffet, so heavy that she cried out, staggered, then, pushed
against in the melee, fell upon the earth. The raven crew threatened
trampling. "_Jesu Maria!_" she cried, and tried to raise herself, but
could not. Ian, very near her, took a step farther in and, stooping,
lifted her. But now the ravens chose to fall foul of him. The woman
was presently gone, and her peasant fellows.... He was beating off a
drunken Comus crew, with some of active ill-will. His dress was
rich--he was not Roman, evidently--the surge had foamed and dragged
across from the bonfire and the open place to the dark mouth of a