Presently Anania revived. He looked contemptuously at the fringe of red hair round the Captain's bald head. He saw deformed ears and the end of a waxed moustache. He felt a ferocious wish to box the deformed ears as many times as there remained hairs on his hideous head. Margherita presently turned round, surprised by Anania's silence. Their eyes met. Seeing him depressed, Margherita's eyes became shadowed. Anania saw it and he smiled. In a moment they were both merry again. Margherita tried to give her attention to the stage, but felt that Anania was smiling still, and that his long, half-closed eyes were still fixed on her. A delicate intoxication overpowered them both. After the comedy there was a farce at which Signor Carboni laughed immoderately. Margherita was vexed to see her father laughing like a baby. She had read that fashionable persons never attend to the play, still less are amused by it. The Secretary of the Sub-Prefecture frequently turned his back on the stage, and Margherita would have liked her father to do the same. It was near midnight when Anania accompanied the Carboni's to their home. The Assessor--old and a babbler--walked with the Syndic, telling of an American medical discovery: that microbes are essential to the human organism. The boy and girl walked in front, laughing when they slipped on the cobbles of the miry streets. Other persons went by, laughing and chattering. The night was dark, warm, velvety. Now and then a breeze from the east came, went, returned wafting a wild perfume from the woods outside the town. Stars, infinite like human tears, sparkled in the limitless heaven. Jupiter flamed over Orthobene. Who does not remember in his early youth some such night, some such hour? Stars quivering in the depths of a night more luminous than twilight, stars not seen but felt--ready to descend upon our brow; the brilliant bear like a golden chariot waiting to carry us to the land of dreams; a dark pathway; felicity so near, she can be grasped and retained for ever and for ever. More than once Anania felt the girl's hand touch his. The mere thought that he might take it and press it seemed sacrilege. He felt a sort of double consciousness. He spoke yet seemed silent, his thoughts far away. He walked and stumbled yet seemed scarce to touch the earth. He laughed yet was sad almost to tears. He saw Margherita by his side, so near, that he might touch her, yet she appeared far away, intangible like the breath of the wind which went and came. She laughed and jested with him. In her eyes he had seen the reflection of his own distress; yet he told himself she could only regard him as a faithful dog. He thought-- "Could she guess I was consumed with the desire to press her hand she would cry out with horror; she would regard me then as a rabid dog."