Letters came from home – a few shy lines from each of the boys, a long scrawl from Georgie – very affectionate, and begging her sister to use the words “passed on” instead of “died” – and from her mother almost daily letters, which by the many erasures Joanna knew had been written in forbidden hours. Juley had at once offered to come to Italy. But the girl forbade it, saying she would herself come home as soon as she could leave Maddalena in the company of an old friend who was coming from Sicily to be with her.

o return home seemed the only reasonable course. Joanna had come to feel a great tenderness for Maddalena. She was moved as well as surprised to find how the elder woman clung to her. For Mario’s death had worked a curious change between the two women; and now it was the southerner who with every action betrayed her spiritual dependence on the northerner. But save for Maddalena there was no life for Joanna in Florence, and as the days crept past and past, she had to admit that life was still before her. In time Maddalena would once more take up the orderly threads of existence in her efficient hands, and the friend from Sicily would probably make her home at the villa. But Joanna could not consent to live on her sister-in-law. Apart from the remnant of Mario’s savings – a bare fifty pounds – she was left without money. No. She must go back to Glasgow and learn how to live. There were listless hours, wasted years to be made good. She felt rather like a child who had played truant from school, and is led back to its task.

Joanna decided that she would break the return journey at Viareggio, there to see Aunt Perdy and deliver Juley’s present. A visit had more than once been suggested, but till now it had not been practicable.

At the station in Florence she hung round Maddalena’s neck. Though Maddalena’s face was swollen above the high, tight-fitting, black neckband, and her eyelids were sodden and puffy, she seemed to have shed all her tears. But amid the distractions of packing it was two days since Joanna had cried, and now her eyes streamed. People looked with open expressions of sympathy at the embracing women dressed in deepest Continental mourning. At first Joanna had tried to keep some moderation in her weeds, but seeing at once that her sister-in-law would be hurt by any opposition in the matter, she had become passive. It would be easy to modify her dress when she reached home. Now she wore a skirt bordered with a hem of crape half a yard deep, and a bodice without an inch of white anywhere. And the black veiling, which fell from the brim of her hat, reached almost to her heels at the back. With her youth and her white skin she was notable, and she felt like an adventuress. A pang of surprised amusement shot through her when she thought what Mario’s feelings would have been at seeing her thus conspicuous. It was as if, far down in the dark mourning waters a silver bubble of laughter were released and struggling upwards. The inclination to laugh was intense, inebriating. It seemed years since she had laughed. For a wild moment she thought she must spout her soul out in an eruption of the old schoolgirl madness of laughter. But the moment passed; and she only hugged Maddalena the tighter because of it, and smiled at her the more tenderly.