She was, in however modest a degree, the instrument of a great cause: in this setting redolent of antiquity she even risked to herself the word “handmaiden.” A dozen years earlier, in Toronto, she had diligently studied Italian in order to take her elderly mother to Rome. In the end, that summer, they had settled for Lake Louise, but she had kept up a little with the language. And this dormant ability had posted her now, miraculously, to an emergency mission newly established in the Mediterranean as an antidote to an international crisis.

An employee from the hotel was opening colored umbrellas on the stony beach below. One or two hardy guests were bathing, although the sea looked neither calm nor warm. Apart from occasional shouts of “Herrlich!” from the swimmers, the only sound was the rhythmic crunching of waves up the pebbled shore. “Sophocles long ago heard it on the Aegean,” quoted Miss Kingslake to herself, and the consummation of the familiar line in an actual experience, combined with fatigue from an overnight plane journey, brought a rush of tears to her eyes.

The telephone rang and she jumped up to answer. It was the concierge. Yes, he had put the call through to her office. No, no one wished to speak with her. However, there was a message: a Signor Grilli (the concierge permitted his voice a faint smile, for the name meant “crickets”) would come to see her at eight this evening.

She put the phone down. She had expected to be called to work at once and was disappointed. It was considerate of this Grilli, who was in charge of the new mission, to give her a day’s grace, but she was anxious to take up her duties. She thought she would rest before unpacking and walking out to look at the town.

“Grilli. Downstairs.”

“I’ll be right down.” She sat up, replaced the receiver, tried to think where she was. It was after eight. She sprang off the bed, pulled on her dress, combed her hair, alarming herself by muttering “My God” as she fumbled with buttons and looked for her shoes.

When she came out of the elevator there was no one to be seen. The concierge directed her to one of the lounges. It was a large room beside the bar, decorated with graceful murals of the seasons, and the one person in it was paring his nails beneath the harvest. Miss Kingslake realized that, because of the name, she had been expecting a slight brittle figure, whereas the man who glanced in her direction, put away his nail file, and made a minimal effort to rise was a big man, a fat man, too young a man to be completely bald. His Sicilian ancestry—from which he had inherited the knowledge of the Italian language that had brought him, too, on this mission—was not apparent.

She shook hands and sat down with an apology for keeping him waiting. “It must be the journey.” She smiled. “I was in a deep sleep.”