From time to time flashed the violet gleam of a bicycle lamp, which went silently by, preceded by a big butterfly of shadow. At intervals a few voices vibrated in the silence and immobility of the sleeping world. The magic of dream floated in the warm, soft air. But the young pair no longer felt the magic. Antonio was hot about his plans; Regina overcome by pity for the man whom her folly had so miserably and so profoundly changed. CHAPTER IV They returned to Rome about the middle of August, and changed their dwelling. The _mezzanino_ was really charming, but one of the rooms remained almost empty for lack of furniture. "We might let it," suggested Regina. "Fie! Who's the little _bourgeoise_ now?" cried Antonio, indignant. "Oh, one changes as life goes on," she said, not without bitterness; "one gets older, gets whipped, ends by adapting oneself to anything." She did in fact adapt herself--without knowing why. In herself and in her surroundings, in the quiet life which she and Antonio had resumed, she was sometimes conscious of an emptiness like that in the new Apartment, but she no longer rebelled. After dinner they would go out arm in arm in the good _bourgeois_ fashion, stifling the gentle tedium of their existence at the Café Aragno or in Piazza Colonna, oftener in the streets and avenues round Piazza della Stazione. The little tables in front of the Café Gambrinus or Café Morteo were always surrounded by people who at any rate seemed very lively. Crowds tramped the broad streets, bright with electricity and moonlight. Beyond the great white square, where the twin lights of the trams shone like drops of water, the station carriages looked like files of monstrous sleeping insects. After the long silences and solemn solitudes of the Po, back now in the crowd, in the cold, sharp splendour of the electric lights hidden like little moons among the black ilices, Regina felt herself in a dream. The cafés were overflown with light. Livid reflections came from some empty table. Vestiges of lunar rays made their way through the green shadows, the strange semi-darkness of the trees. The crowd rolled past and looked into the café, merry with a second crowd reflected and multiplied by mirrors. Now and then, in the smoke-wreathed background of the Morteo, hovered the moving and screaming figure of a singer, whose coarse notes were mixed with the melancholy scraping of violins and the buzz of the people. A hundred faces, derisive but brutally pleased, looked at the swaying, strident figure. Regina found a curious interest in watching the crowd, the faces, the light dresses of the women, the physiognomy of the men who ogled the singer, the pitiable arms of this pitiable creature.