“Gillo’s plans are to teach in England,” she told Alberto stubbornly. She searched her mind to recall if he had ever hinted at a wife, a child, a mistress. Wouldn’t Gillo have realized that in her meeting with his friend Alberto this part of his life was bound to come out? Was that what Gillo was counting on? Was that why he hadn’t come with her to Italy, after all? He wanted her to get the news from someone else. That would give her time to have absorbed the worst and gotten used to it, accepted it, before he got there.

“Why wasn’t his wife with him in England?” Marguerite asked hostilely.

“She is living with her parents and has work here. It’s better for her and the child to stay here while Gillo is in England. It won’t be forever. He has only to perfect his English and get his book finished. That will open the way for him in Italy. He is extremely intelligent.”

“Yes, I know.” Intelligent enough to use the Englishwoman to get to England; as he would have used me and my American cigarettes to keep him company and type his notes in Manchester or Liverpool or wherever the hell he’s going. Then, with his career all set, he’d come back to his wife and child, and that would be that. A life full of sun and light.

Oh, Christ, I love him! Would he leave his wife? Is that why he wanted me to go back with him? I could go back for the winter and see what happens by the time next summer comes. Even if he doesn’t leave his wife, we could have that time together and not think ahead.

As the possibilities of choice presented themselves to her while she sat silently next to Alberto, Marguerite felt that it would be impossible for her to love Gillo within time limits, knowing the end was already predetermined. It was too much to expect to have him. There it was, the old phrase of her convent schooling: Domine non sum dignus—exclusion from grace because she didn’t merit it.

She couldn’t remember how she got through the rest of the evening with Alberto Morosini.

She spent Christmas at Alberto’s old home in Venice, where his sister still lived and where a few relatives stopped by to greet him. “Why, she’s just a girl!” an aunt of Alberto’s had said on meeting Marguerite.

In January he invited her to Rome for the opera to hear Don Giovanni.