“Thank you,” Isabel said in a small voice. “That’s what I came to ask.” Relief flooded her. Unashamedly she wiped her eyes, blew her nose. The church, she thought, is this if it is anything, a place of sanctuary to the self-tortured, even to the criminal, but she took back the word. Dr. Willoughby had erased the word by all that he had told her. And for a moment at least she could lay aside the sense she had had of being attacked, of being pursued by she did not know what exactly. She was relieved to be asked to deal now with certain practical questions, such as the casket. It seemed that she must go to an address Dr. Willoughby gave her and decide what would be suitable. He would call a taxi; it should not take very long. Would she have time before lunch? She was to lunch with a Professor Goldberg.

Dr. Willoughby raised his eyebrows a trifle.

“Who is Professor Goldberg?” she asked. “Tell me a little about these people. I’m so ignorant”—she smiled a social smile. Goldberg, it seemed, was the star of the English department, but by no means an intimate friend of Edward’s. Dr. Willoughby was obviously surprised that she was to lunch with him. But she could not press him for his reasons. She was helpless, at the mercy of strangers. Would Dr. Willoughby tell her something about an Italian professor called Fosca? She was to meet him that night at the Phillipses for dinner.

“Sit down just a minute,” Dr. Willoughby commanded. “Orlando Fosca,” he murmured, tasting the name as if it were an old brandy. “One of the few great men. You’ve heard no doubt of his history of comparative literature in the Renaissance?” She shook her head. “A classic work in the field. He’s a humanist of the old school and I happen to know that your brother was extremely fond of him.”

“He sounded so frail,” but what she meant was “so old.” “It’s terrible that he had to be called when—when it happened.”

“Tonight perhaps you will see the fire, and then he will not seem frail,” and Dr. Willoughby smiled almost mischievously. “He’s a socialist of the old school, came here to escape from Mussolini years ago. He belongs to another era, the era of pure idealism before World War One. Because of that he has been able to keep a kind of innocence—is that the word?—which people of your brother’s generation and mine have lost. He’s an atheist of course. That too is a matter of generation, perhaps.”

“You know so much about”—she hesitated—“about all this.”