Veronica left Bianca Corleone’s house with a very painful sense of disappointment, and as she drove homeward through the wet streets, she could not get rid of Gianluca’s tearful blue eyes, which seemed to follow her into the carriage; and in the rattling and jolting, she heard again and again that one weak sob which had so disturbed her.  At that moment she would rather have gone directly back to the convent in Rome, to stay there for the rest of her life, than have married such an unmanly man as she believed him to be.  His words had left her cold, his face had frozen her, his tears had disgusted her.  She pitied him for his weakness, not for his love of her, and she hoped that she might never again hear any man speak to her as he had spoken.  Nevertheless there had been in his tone, at the last, the doubt-splitting accent of a sharp truth that hurt him to tears.  She wondered why he had not moved her at all.  The day seemed more grey and wet and desolate than ever.  She thought that everybody in the street looked draggled and disappointed.  Near Santa Lucia she passed a wretched vender of strung filberts and doubtful cakes, mounting guard over his poor little handcart with a dilapidated umbrella, under the half-shelter of a projecting balcony.  A couple of barefooted boys crouched on the wet pavement by the sea-stairs, with a piece of sacking drawn over both their heads together, gnawing hard-tack, and as the rain struck the stones, it splashed up in their faces under their sack.  On the left, the coral shops showed their brilliant wares dimly through the rain-streaks, with closed glass doors through which here and there the disconsolate face of the shopkeeper was visible, as he stood gazing out upon the dismal, dripping scene.  A sailor man came out of the marine headquarters at the turning of the Strada dei Giganti, bending his flat cap against the rain and burying his ears in the blue linen collar of his shirt, which was turned back over his thick jacket.  The water splashed out from under his heavy shoes, to the right and left, as he walked quickly up the hill.  Beyond that, the Piazza San Ferdinando was deserted, and the broad wet pavement lay flat and darkly gleaming upward to the broad, watery sky that stretched grey and even, without shading, like a sheet of wet india-rubber over all the city.  Then the Toledo, where the gutters could not swallow the deluge, but sent their overflow in dark yellow streams down each side of the street—­then the narrower, darker ways and lanes between the high houses and the low, black doorways, through the heart of old Naples, home at last to the Palazzo Macomer.