He stayed leaning against a column of the portico while she seated herself on the top step, arranging one knee demurely over the other in precisely the pose of the fresco she had mentioned, in the cloister of the church. He would have liked to make the comparison to her, but unfortunately that was another thing that had turned corny, telling foreign girls they looked like madonnas. In fact, this one was more vital, more resourceful than any madonna—more like some sturdy animal curled up there in the shade at his feet, the dots on her dress giving her shoulders a supple, speckled look, as if she would spring away at any moment.

Don’t be too stalwart, he implored her; it’s a terrible trap, that making the best of things. You could end up sitting in a window in Islington, turned to stone.

“Here they come.” She did not stand up immediately. She stuffed her handkerchief away in the big straw bag and took out her sunglasses, then got to her feet. She went down one step, forgetting about him, then turned around. “Goodbye.” A handshake never entered her head, but she gave him a curious, old-fashioned nod. “Thank you for the name.”

“Name?”

It had already escaped her. “Of the sculptor.”

“Oh. Now I’ll always think of it as an English statue, anyway.”

That touched her, he saw. She lifted her eyes for a second in the tender look she had given the girls, raised her hand, and walked away.

“How was it?” she asked the girls.

“Super, Miss Ingram.”

“Mine wasn’t. Nothing but seeds.”

“Will it stain?”

“Do you have—now listen to me, all of you—do you all have your scarves for the church?” They started delving in their handbags. “Remember what happened at San Gimignano.”

They remembered, all right, good little Protestants. “That priest was crazy. What a kook.”

“First, we’re going into the cloister, to see the painting I told you about. La Madonna del Sacco, which means the Madonna of the Bag.” The girls collapsed into giggles. She opened the guidebook. “Don’t be silly. There’s a bag in the painting. It doesn’t say why.”

They crowded around to look at the reproduction. “Cripes, an old laundry bag.”

“A laundry bag, yet.”

They walked away toward the church, her clear voice calming the shrill cries of the group. Michele couldn’t believe she would not look back at him, but she walked right across the square without hesitating, quite absorbed in what she was saying, only nodding to right or left as she spoke with the girls.

At the entrance to the church portico, she stopped and turned around, lifting her arm.

His hand shot up in answer, but she wasn’t looking at him. She had raised her arm to shade her face. She was looking at the statue, going away from her with averted head, high above the cars.