“Shall we finish our tea here,” he asked and told them. And soon they all sat in the carved chairs they would later see in portraits of prime ministers, royal couples, august artistic eminences, and milk-white moonflower ingenues.

They did not speak further of the picture until Muriel stood to leave. Maestro offered, “Shall we have it shipped to you, then?”

“What a bother that must cause you. If the paint is quite dry and if it might be rolled, perhaps I could venture to do something so simple as take it … with me? That, don’t you find, remains one of watercolors’ many merits—their portability, so to speak.”

Again in insurmountable yet, one felt, idiomatic Italian, he ordered that a pasteboard tube be brought, and, before becoming hidden, the picture was studied again. “Are you averse, Maestro, to signing your works? Or does it interfere with the overall design, or whatever?” The “whatever” she would later rue, but at least it was less bad than that beef-jerky American “Beg pardon?”

“No.” He took up the brush and bowed forward, left a trace of name not unprominently placed.

“About my homage, your remuneration, or what have you …” she began, dogged, Scottish, stifled but determined. And really, now, for the first time in the seven years since she first labored toward this, Miss Muriel Fraser felt embarrassed at her half-coarse daring; it was like some pastor’s pious eldest daughter unaccountably choosing the traveling career of a juggling comic actress. She was briefly confused as to her motives in all she had attempted. But now Muriel could not imagine returning home without having achieved this one distinguished thing via fate’s own patronage. The prospect became such a sadness, it belatedly weakened her.

There was a louder knocking at the front door, which somehow made them all laugh. This time he seemed to order his servant to refrain from even answering. So, the signature blown until quite dry, Maestro rolled the picture with a wrenching matter-of-factness and popped it—no other word would do—into its tube.

And then, jovial as a mayor, he was walking them to the door. “This has been quite refreshing, spending time with two of my countrywomen who’ve remained so utterly unstudied. You would not believe the pretension of certain Americans who seek one out here.”

“It can be a little frightful,” Muriel offered, and then Ethel, the door now opened, saw fit to risk, “Though they doubtless mean well and are merely nervous in your presence. It is clumsiness is all, perhaps.” And smiled.

He seemed pleased enough, but as the door was nearly closed, they heard him cough some orders to his servant, or indicate social relief, going on to the next thing. And they felt no doubt, as they strode arm in arm back to the hotel, that Maestro had, for all his courtesy, already largely forgotten them. Maybe the Germans must now be dealt with? Maybe he needed dinner? Surely he had moved on to persons more significant and more lovely and with actual money. But the Fraser girls, their hen-brown mailing tube held before and against them, they did not mind.