Three years earlier, Vittorio had bought a secondhand Topolino, and this extended his activities. From time to time, he drove into the hills to the south of Siena to inspect his family’s villa, the house where he had spent his childhood and youth; closed and empty since the war, it was now the property of his brother Giacomo.

Vittorio was fifty-nine. He had considered and spoken of himself as an old man for so many years that his sixtieth birthday seemed long past, and he found it strange that he had yet to attain it. He dated his old age from the death of his wife twenty years before. Had it not been disloyal to Teresa, he would have admitted to himself that the date might be set even earlier; he could scarcely recall ever having felt sensations that might pass for youth. A childhood burden of family disturbances had, by his early marriage, been exchanged for the sorrow of Teresa’s long illness, and subsequently for the lonely anxiety of his exile. His manner of living since his return to Siena represented the first true peace he had experienced; he could not willingly envisage any conclusion to it other than decrepitude and death.

Because he recognized these things in himself, it surprised him to find that the arrival of the Murrays caused him, as yet, no pain. Distantly, through the closed door, he could hear sounds of luggage pushed along tiled floors, and the raised voice of Giuseppina; and once, into a silence, flickered Mrs. Murray’s laugh. He took up his pen and lowered his hand to the page, but still did not write, so greatly was he surprised by his own pleasure and by an agreeable echo of what he presumed must be excitement.

The spring that year was cool and wet, terminating in a week of blinding heat that announced the summer. Tourists wandered in the city’s curving, shadowed streets and climbed its narrow towers, and ultimately slumped into chairs in the piazza, demanding iced drinks. Jonathan Murray complained that his work in the museum was interrupted by the monologues of German students and the reluctant tramp of busloads of visitors. Isabel smiled and, walking about the town, grew browner and seemed at ease.