Pandolfini at this moment was standing out on the terrace of his villa, looking across the Tuscan garden of rich cultivation about. The grey olive-trees were dark in the monotony of the night, the soft hills all shrouded, the distant Apennines lying like shadows against the shadowy horizon. Here and there the gleam of a firefly gave a touch of light, and the roses were all a-bloom upon the hedges, betraying themselves by their sweetness. He stood alone and gazed out upon the dark, seeing nothing, yet somehow receiving the shadowy monotones of the night into his soul, as Diana was receiving the ghostly reflections and shadowed calm of the lonely room. All shadows, without and within; but he was at one of those points of existence when everything is too vivid and actual to permit of dreaming. His whole life was changed; he was another man, with new duties, new burdens, new companionship. How he was to make his toilsome way among them he could not tell. There was a heavy dew in his eyes, essence of pain and wonder at all that had happened to him,--at this revolution which was, yet was not, his doing,--at the new claims, all so terribly real, undeniable, true. How had it come about? What fate had led him by strange paths to this transformation of existence? He could not tell. It seemed a gratuitous interference as of some potent spirit who wished him ill, and had led him astray. The world was as dark to him as the fields, with impulses of pity, of generous devotion, of honour and kindness, lighting it fitfully like the fireflies: but for himself all dark--no comfort in it, nor any visible hope. Yet his mind was hushed with the very greatness of the crisis. It was done, and the agitations were so far calmed; his fate was decided. But when the moon rose Pandolfini retreated before it, covering his eyes. The dark was more congenial. He wanted no soft angelical face to shine upon him, no light to follow him at that moment of his life. CHAPTER XVIII. AFTERWARDS.