Hardly realizing what he was doing, Rafael went down into the street.  Soon he found himself upon the bridge, where a few strollers, hat in hand, were breathing the night air eagerly, looking at the clusters of broken light that the moon was scattering over the river like fragments of a mirror.

He went on through the silent, deserted streets of the suburbs, his footsteps echoing from the sidewalks.  One row of houses lay white and gleaming under the moon.  The other was plunged in shadow.  He was drawn on and on into the mysterious silence of the fields.

His mother was asleep, he suddenly reflected.  She would know nothing.  He would be free till dawn.  He yielded further to the attraction of the roads that wound in and out through the orchards, where so many times he had dreamed and hoped.

The spectacle was not new to Rafael.  Every year he had watched that fertile plain come to life at the touch of Springtime, cover itself with flowers, fill the air with perfumes; and yet, that night, as he beheld the vast mantle of orange-blossoms that had settled over the fields, and was gleaming in the moonlight like a fall of snow, he felt himself completely in control of an infinitely sweet emotion.

The orange-trees, covered from trunk to crown with white, ivory-smooth flowerets, seemed like webs of spun glass, the vegetation of one of those fantastic snow-mantled landscapes that quiver sometimes in the glass spheres of paper-weights.  The perfume came in continuous, successive waves, rolling out upon the infinite with a mysterious palpitation, transfiguring the country, imparting to it a feeling of supernaturalness—­the vision of a better world, of a distant planet where men feed on perfume and live in eternal poetry.  Everything was changed in this spacious love-nest softly lighted by a great lantern of mother-of-pearl.  The sharp crackling of the branches sounded in the deep silence like so many kisses; the murmur of the river became the distant echo of passionate love-making, hushed voices whispering close to the loved one’s ears words tremulous with adoration.  From the canebrake a nightingale was singing softly, as if the beauty of the night had subdued its plaintive song.

How good it was to be alive!  The blood tingled more rapidly, more hotly, through the body!  Every sense seemed sharper, more acute; though that landscape imposed silence with its pale wan beauty, just as certain emotions of intense joy are tasted with a sense of mystic shrinking!

Rafael followed the usual path.  He had turned instinctively toward the Blue House.

The shame of his disgrace still smarted raw within him.  Had he met Leonora now in the middle of the road he would have recoiled in childish terror; but he would not meet her at such an hour.  That reflection gave him strength to walk on.  Behind him, over the roofs of the city, the tolling of a clock rolled.  Midnight!  He would go as far as the wall of her orchard, enter if that were possible, stand there a few moments in silent humility before the house, looking up adoringly at the windows behind which Leonora lay sleeping.