The two on the platform stood still for a few seconds, convalescent, before they walked away to their little car. In the clear, black, country air outside the station, Julie shivered again. The wind had risen, as it had the night before. They got into the car without speaking. Only when the engine started, on the third try, did Julie move up against Ben. He put his arm briefly around her, and then withdrew it. The car moved off.

“Poor old Lilian,” Julie said.

HAROLD

Every evening of the summer, lanterns were hung from the oleanders and they had dinner in the garden. The table was a long and rickety affair on trestles, and there were always insects because of the lights, but on balance it was worth it. The evenings were cool even after the August days, which recorded heat, long after dark, in the villa’s outer walls. The wall facing onto this terrace-garden was still warm to the touch, although it was past nine o’clock and Signora Ricciardi and her guests were sitting down to dinner.

The scene, too, was worth the discomfort: the white table, three flasks of wine, pale dishes of bread, red dishes of meat, green bowls of salad; the summer-colored dresses of the women, and a crimson shawl hung on a chair; everything scented by flower beds, in eclipse beyond the lanterns, and by lemon trees, which stood about in great stone urns. Above the line of hills facing across a valley, the sky glowed from the lights of Siena, but the house at night rode its hilltop in rolling, dark countryside with the purposeful isolation of a ship at sea, and people around the table, too, assumed something of the serene animation of voyagers.

Bernard Tourner was as lean and astringent as his wife, Monique, was plump and soft—a dove in her gray dress. For many years they had come from Paris to spend their summers at this pensione, and each morning they would disappear in their little ancient car for an excursion to Arezzo or Volterra, or simply into the Chianti hills, returning as children return from a trip to the seaside, refreshed and exhausted and painfully sunburned.

Bernard’s appearance was an index of his personality, sensitive and slightly waspish. A quick understanding and a rich, ready memory made him an excellent companion at the table, but because of his occasional moodiness it was felt that Monique was not to be envied. However, they were deeply dependent upon each other, and Monique seemed always sweetly and unheroically content.

They were sitting, this evening, on either side of Charles Holmes, who was an Englishman, and who, from shyness, talked and listened with a habitual vagueness, glancing at Dora, his wife, sitting opposite. Dora passed the wine to him across the table; Dora was dark and beautiful and not shy at all.