She was sitting by the window, with the radio on, and a few hundred skirts scattered on the carpet. The white velvet couch looked like an abandoned raft. I sat down on it to have tea. “Arianna was asking after you today,” Viola said, slipping off one skirt to try on another. It was as if after a week a drum had stopped beating.

“How is she?” I said.

“She’s hysterical about you. She says you dumped her just like that and didn’t get in touch again.”

Well, it had been kind of her to tell it that way. “Everything okay with the sister?”

“Of course. All they ever do is fight and make up.”

“She’s an unpredictable character.”

“She’s beautiful, my dear, and beautiful people are always unpredictable. They know that whatever they do, they’ll be forgiven.” She picked another skirt off the floor. “Oh, yes,” she sighed, “it’s even better than being rich, because beauty, my dear, never has a whiff of struggle or effort about it, but comes directly from God, and that’s enough to make it the only true human aristocracy, don’t you think?”

“Very profound.”

“It’s a simple observation,” she said. “All I’ve been doing lately is observing. Why do you think that is?”

“I have no idea. Have you tried going to a doctor?”

“Arianna would do that,” she said, amused. “Ever since she was in that clinic, she hasn’t been able to live without doctors. Did you know she was even going to marry one? Then she moved to Rome, and nothing came of it.”

“What kind of clinic?” I said. What kind of clinic did I think? One of those horrible places where people go in feeling a little nervous and come out completely crazy. All she did, shut in there, was sleep and play solitaire. When Eva found out, she got on the first train to Venice and brought her to Rome.

I stayed for dinner, of course. “All right,” I said, lost in thought. I felt as if it really was me who’d ditched her that morning. “Why do they fight?” I asked after a while. Oh, for a whole bunch of reasons, each one more futile than the last. Plus, you had to remember that when it came to her nerves, Arianna was still a little bit fragile. She couldn’t go anywhere without her bottle of perfume and her pack of cards. Once, when she left her cards at home, she’d gone around the streets in tears, did I know that?

“No,” I said, “I didn’t know that.”

“Shall I get dinner ready, signora?” Afternoon had passed and evening was spreading in from the windows. Viola gave a start and switched the light on to reveal a little man with a deep voice, wearing a striped jacket. He had emerged from his afternoon off, looking contrite.