The model moved from standing to sitting, then to standing with one foot on a rung of the chair, and we drew each position. Only then were we allowed to do a full rendition, either in charcoal, pastels or watercolour. I chose charcoal. We worked on it for the last hour of class, and the professoressa seemed quite pleased with mine. “You have taken this class before, I can tell,” she said. “You are new at the accademia?”

“I’m a visitor from England,” I replied. “And I’ve had one year of college art, but never a figure class, which was why I chose this.”

“Good. You have aptitude with the human form.” She gave me an encouraging nod and went on to the next person.

“Clearly you have been hiding your light from us,” Gaston muttered. He was sitting behind me. “Obviously, you have studied many men in great detail before this, like the handsome boat driver last night, eh?”

And I couldn’t stop myself from blushing scarlet. “Don’t be silly,” I said. “I seem to be able to draw people, that’s all.”

“I feel that prim Miss Browning has more to offer than it would seem,” he went on.

I ignored him. I could hear him chuckling. I didn’t quite know what to make of him. He was a flirt, but what could he see in me, especially when he was clearly interested in Imelda? Was it perhaps a national sport in France to flirt? I knew so little of men in any country, only that the English boys I had met in my youth lacked any finesse in approaching the opposite sex. Too many years of boarding school, I suspect.

Anyway, the encounter had cheered me in a strange way. I had expected to feel annoyed, but now I realized it was nice to know I was not to be the older spinster, overlooked and unimportant. I gathered up my things and started down the stairs, wondering where I should go for lunch. There was a small sandwich shop on Calle della Toletta nearby that did wonderful tramezzini : little finger sandwiches containing interesting things like tuna and olives, ham and shrimp. They were very cheap, too. One could pick six of them and only pay pennies. I knew I should be having my main meal at midday, but somehow I couldn’t face eating a whole plate of spaghetti in the heat. The only problem about the sandwich shop was that they spoke Venetian. By now I had come to realize that the local language was not just a dialect, a difference in pronunciation, but a language of its own. “Bondì ” was a classic example. Nothing like “buon giorno,” the normal greeting for “good day.”