Suddenly from the castle there came the renewed sound of fanfares, repeated in brief intervals. They were preparing to start. No one thought of him. For them he had already ceased to be. With an effort he roused himself. Not a moment was to be lost. He had no longer any right here, no longer the right to mingle with the happy companions of former days. The thought that she too had turned from him in his hour of need, lent him wings. He must set out at once. All that had at one time delighted him, now repelled with the consciousness, that it was not for him. He stole back to the castle over devious paths, reached his chamber and gathered up his scant belongings. A last look round the walls he had learned to love, then he crept softly out into the corridor. Everywhere he met the rush and hubbub of hurried preparation for departure. No one heeded him. The hall below seemed to yawn beneath him like a black pit as he descended. Crossing the courtyard amidst throngs of pages, squires, and pursuivants, he made for the stables, saddled his steed, and rode out by the postern, unheeded, unchallenged. The land of his heart's desire had vanished behind him, like the fairy-land of golden sunset dreams that fades away when darkness comes. CHAPTER VII THE PASSAGE Francesco rode out into the scented night and the round yellow moon rode with him. Strange things were happening beneath that moon; in the crucible of destiny a new life was forming, new feelings arising on the ashes of the old. And Francesco's heart was slowly undergoing a change as he rode through the night into a season of darkness, inevitable, irrevertible. Ahead of him the great road stretched white in the moonlight, a broad ribbon which lost itself among hills and in the shadows of trees. In his ears was the thunder of his horse's feet, pounding insistent clamor into the quiet of the night. He would have desired wings for his steed; the wind of the speed of his going swept cool against his face. The night was gray around him, a velvet moon-steeped darkness, odorous with the fragrance of breaking earth. Far away the deep-throated bay of a dog rose and died across the world. A bell note, thinned by distance to a faint dream sound, stole over silent hill and dale; peace seemed to wrap the world round as in a cloister garden. With every mile that now carried him farther away from his Eden, from his garden of dreams, from his lost youth, new scenes unrolled themselves before him. Off in the wide Apulian plains lights twinkled here and yonder, wakeful eyes of watchfulness among the hills. He passed pale glimmering bogs, where lonely herons brooded, and wide barren heaths, over which the road led straight as an arrow's flight.