The painting in the church was so dark that it might have been anything; Tessa could not help wondering why no connoisseur had already discovered it. The idea of this possible beauty stored up in secrecy made her quite dumb; she gripped Milton and Sydney each by an arm and forced them to stand and look at it. She hoped that they might understand the picture better than she did and say what they felt about it, but when after a moment or two of attention they simply turned to smile to one another across her she felt constrained to put forward: ‘There’s something about that face … I know there’s something about the expression. If only it could be cleaned a little without destroying the value … I should never feel the same, you know, about any picture in Florence; they are so known.’ The air of the church was stale with the incense of years, the breath of long-dead congregations had not been disturbed; it was cold with the exhalations of stone for ever in darkness. Mrs Kerr wandered off by herself and stood in abstraction in front of the altar; a shaft of light from a window above her leant solid across the gloom. ‘I expect,’ thought Tessa, ‘she is really very religious,’ and she felt stirred again, as she had been by the picture. She kept the others waiting about because she did not like to interrupt Mrs Kerr – she had always known that there was something in Mrs Kerr, and at the moment perhaps it was near them. ‘I can’t stand this air any longer, I shall be sick,’ exclaimed Sydney suddenly, and after a last glance towards the altar pushed aside the leather curtain on the door and went out hurriedly. The church stood on the rim of hill between the known and unknown landscapes, a melancholy outpost, and it would be pleasant for Sydney to wait outside, though not, Milton seemed to think, to wait alone: he went out after her. Tessa sat down by herself at the end of the church and presently, after one or two uncertain glances round her, knelt.

Milton managed to dispel the swarm of little boys who, having presented a bunch of flowers to Sydney with a complimentary address, demanded to be paid for them.