the sound of voices, and laughter, and
the rustle of feminine skirts. He turned round to see Galeazzo Secinaro
entering, accompanied by Lady Heathfield and followed by the Countess
Lucoli, Gino Bomminaco and Giovanella Daddi. They were all laughing and
talking noisily.

He did his best to conceal himself from them in the crowd that besieged
the auctioneer's table. He shuddered at the thought of being discovered.
Their voices and laughter reached him over the heads of the perspiring
people through the suffocating heat. Fortunately the gay party very soon
afterwards took themselves off.

He forced himself a passage through the closely packed bodies,
repressing his disgust as well as he could, and making the most
tremendous efforts to ward off the faintness that threatened to overcome
him. There was a bitter and sickening taste in his mouth. He felt that
from the contact of all these unclean people he was carrying away with
him the germs of obscure and irremediable diseases. Physical torture
mingled with his moral anguish.

When he got down into the street in the full blaze of noon-day, he had a
touch of giddiness. With an unsteady step, he set off in search of a
cab. He found one in the Piazza del Quirinale and drove straight home.

Towards evening, however, a wild desire came over him to revisit those
dismantled rooms. He went upstairs and entered, on the pretext of asking
if the furniture he had bought had been sent away yet.

A man answered him: the things had just gone, the Signor Conte must have
passed them on his way here.

Hardly anything remained in the rooms. The crimson splendour of the
setting sun gleamed through the curtainless windows and mingled with the
noises of the street. Some men were taking down the hangings from the
walls, disclosing a paper with great vulgar flowers, torn here and there
and hanging in strips. Others were engaged in taking up and rolling the
carpets, raising a cloud of dust that glittered in the sunlight. One of
them sang scraps of a lewd song. Dust and tobacco-smoke mingled and rose
to the ceiling.

Andrea fled.

In the Piazza del Quirinale a brass band was playing in front of the
royal palace. Great waves of metallic music spread through the glowing
air. The obelisk, the fountain, the statues looked enormous and seemed
to glow as if impregnated with flame. Rome, immense and dominated by a
battle of clouds, seemed to illumine the sky.

Half-demented, Andrea fled; through t