As the sun set over the sharp rock outlines of Ponza, and the aperitif hour settled on the pink town and ships in harbor, Signora Morosini took a poison dart from her handbag, and taking careful aim, made a bull’s-eye on Signor Morosini’s chest as he sat in bed reading Thomism and Modern Theology. She turned herself in to the hotel concierge and was in due time tried for murder. Her case was sensational in Italy. If it had been a crime of honor or passion there would have been sympathy and flowers tossed at her as she entered the courtroom. But Signora Morosini herself insisted to the court that she killed her husband because he had promised her a creative life and hadn’t kept his word; because he still spoke poor English; because he spent summers at the sea without ever swimming or walking on the beach; because he drew the blinds on sun and light.

“I keep dreaming of skiing,” Marguerite told Dr. Verdile, her psychiatrist in Rome.

“What does skiing mean to you?”

“Freedom—or maybe being alone, because Alberto doesn’t ski. But mostly freedom: moving, flying, soaring.”

“What kind of freedom?”

“Getting out of marriage.”

“Why does your marriage keep you from freedom?”

“Because it’s repressive; because I no longer believe in it; because no one should be made to stay on, hating the other, just to stick it out.”

“And you hate your husband?”

“No, not even that . . . I’m just tired. He’s so negative. I want an affirmative life, a positive one I can believe in before it’s too late.”

“And you think you can do this by ending your marriage?”

“Listen! I keep trying, giving it another chance. But there’s the other thing, too—I need love.”

“And your husband doesn’t love you?”

In that moment there flashed across Marguerite’s mind the image of Alberto watching her undress. “You’re still beautiful,” he was telling her, smiling with that mixture of lasciviousness and naiveté that made him so appealing. “You’re like the women of Cranach, with your long legs and those high, small breasts. A perfect woman of Cranach.” And he had caressed her and made love to her and all the while she had thought, I’ve never properly made love to him. . . .

“He loves me,” she told Dr. Verdile. “That’s why I could never leave him in all these years. I don’t like to hurt him. It’s me—I have to love someone.”

“And where will you find this someone?”

“I’ll go to America, Alaska, Australia,” she laughed. “It’s easier there for a woman to remarry and start over.”

“You want to remarry?”

“Why not?”

“But you’re saying marriage is repressive—”