He followed her, reopening his guidebook. “This must be Hadrian’s retreat—the Maritime Theater,” he said. He sat down on the base of the column, and they held the book between them.

We love to indulge in the generally entertained tradition, and fancy the Emperor Hadrian in his moments of spleen and misanthropy slipping off by himself and recover his spirits from the grievous weight of the care of the empire.…

She took off one of her sandals and inspected a blister on her foot. Pulling the strap back over her heel, she glanced at the young man, who was reading carefully. To him, she thought, life was a series of details—a mosaic rather than, say, a painting. He had to have reasons for everything, even if it meant contorting human nature to make it fit into them; so concerned with cause, he ignored consequence. And sometimes, no doubt, it was the right thing. It was the way men’s minds worked, she supposed; the process, in fact, by which the world was provided with machines and roads and bridges—and ruins. But they chose to forget that their whole system of logic could be overturned by the gesture of a woman or a child, or by a single line of poetry. This business of reasoning, she reflected, was all very well, within reason, but if one had nothing to be passionate about one might as well be dead.

“… from the grievous weight of the care of the empire,” she read again. They were, very slightly, leaning on each other.

“Und hier, meine Damen und Herren, war die Zufluchtsstätte des Kaisers,” said a voice behind them.

There were about a dozen in the group, all with reddened faces under their new straw hats, all with woolen socks under their new sandals, all, she noticed, with cameras and guidebooks. They assembled inside the arch, and made notes as the guide pointed and explained. “Man nennt es das Wassertheater.…”

The two by the column sat in silence until the group withdrew. Then she clasped her hands around her knees, turning to him. “It’s just that you do seem to take yourself rather seriously,” she said.

He considered this. “Well … in the end, I suppose, one must.”

“Exactly. So why begin that way?” But this she said almost as an entreaty, adding: “Anyway, you know, you’re so much better than I.”

“In what way, for God’s sake?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Accurate, reliable—”

“It sounds,” he remarked, “like an advertisement for a watch.”

“Et ici nous voyons le refuge de l’Empereur,” a new voice announced from the entrance. “On l’appelle le Théâtre Maritime.”

“Shall we go?” he asked.