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.
Veronica was glad to get back to the fire in her own room, and to feel dry again--for seeing so much water had given her the sensation of being drenched.

And she sat down to think over what had happened in the morning, trying to understand her own disappointment, because she believed that she had expected nothing, and therefore that she could not be disappointed.

She was very glad to get back to her own room.