The villa stood at the very peak of the hill. A walled courtyard in front was entered through an archway, on which there was a coat of arms, all in the same pale stone. As they came through, their host walked out of the house to meet them, waving, calling.

“Wonderful you could all come. Can you pull up by the oleander—that’s just fine. Helena, great to see you.” He was a wide man with a great jaw and hound-like eyes. His smile made an arc in his big face, the smile of the man in the moon.

They got out of the car and stood in a row, messengers at a play exuding their bad news.

Robin said, “You don’t know what’s going on outside your gateway?”

“A fire,” Marian said. “The most terrible fire.”

They walked back over the courtyard, out through the archway. “Jesus,” the wide man said. “Oh Jesus, Jesus.”

Below at the turn of the road the group watched on in silence, dispassionate as Orientals.

“We’ve been on the other side of the house all afternoon. No one told me. I’ve been working. Janet’s been asleep. I saw a small fire there at noon. No one told me about this.”

“Here’s Janet.” The wide man’s slender wife was in the courtyard. Robin thought again how in Italy one was continually tempted to attribute faces to the painters—this one Manneristic, with deeply molded features, the eyes heavy-lidded yet cavernous, the hair swept back as if by a rush of air. With some, one could detect the hand of a master; with most it was merely “School of,” or “After…” There was a lot of overpainting; and, once in a while, a fake.

“Isn’t this horrible.” Janet embraced them. “What a welcome for you. They just came to tell me about it.” They stood with their backs to the house. The fire burned more and more intensely as the dark came down, and now it was spilling out in melted lights toward the valley, like a volcanic eruption.

“It’s not like a forest fire. It’s like the sack of a city, the burning of Troy.” It was true. The black towers of cypresses, the arcs of umbrella pines against the sky made up a fantastic architecture which, moment by moment, the flames consumed. One hissing column of fire, driven upward in a series of small explosions, could be heard over all the rest, a single instrument from the frightful orchestra. Like the opening of a new movement, there was thunder far off in the east.

“Alessandro says there was rain at San Donato this afternoon.”

“Too much to hope—”

The thunder was over them now. The heads of the group of watchers below had turned in their direction: one of them sat in silhouette, with palm extended.

Miss Palmer said, “I felt—”

“So did I. Oh God, if only it would.”