After a moment, Harriet did go—but not, immediately, to rest. She disappeared into the drawing room, and they heard the opening creak of the side door and the thud of its closing. Francis was helping Marina to clear the table, walking around it to bring her the littered fruit plates. It was a relief to him to be here, in this cool room, doing automatic tasks, but he knew that in a moment he must go and look for his wife. He took a tray from the sideboard and arranged on it the glasses gathered together by Marina. Marina, who seemed to know everything—and he found it rather shocking that with her secluded life she should know so much—stood silent, pushing the grape seeds onto one large dish with a knife and making a pile of the stained plates beside her, but he felt soothed and understood, as if she had said something to console him. He dropped the napkins into their basket and, with a murmured excuse, left the room.

In the drawing room, he recovered his book and reading glasses—placed on the table when the lunch bell rang—and opened one of the shuttered doors into the garden. The door was weighted with the heat that met him as he stepped outside; it fell heavily back into place behind him. It annoyed him that Harriet should go out at a time when all other people—all of Italy—rested; annoyed him that he was unable to turn his annoyance into anything but concern, for real anger might have alleviated his misery. He made his way around to the front of the house, his mind presenting his predicament to him in words so simple that they might, but for the context, have been uttered by a child: “She does not love me any more.”

Then: “She loves someone else.” But if that was so, why were they here, together, trying to make things work again? He brushed with his shoulder the dying fronds of wisteria at the corner of the house, and stood in the wall’s shadow, looking for Harriet.

In front of the house was a formal garden, and from this a crescent of graded steps descended to an avenue of ilex. The short avenue was never used now, the house having been connected with the road by a separate, graveled drive that led to the kitchen door. The trees, which needed trimming, met overhead and stood deep in weeds and wild flowers. Throughout the day, hens wandered into the avenue and picked among the straggling grass and made their way haltingly up the steps to stare into the ordered garden. From time to time, on the road below, a car passed, going toward Florence, and country sounds reached the house from the surrounding slopes.