“Oh, Lou, that’s beautiful!” Jesus, how the accolades were rolling in: the Rome gossip and now the pronunciation of health by a practicing psychiatrist.

It was one of those June nights Rome as stage-setting was designed for: suave, tender, unabashedly romantic, the pines giant statements in Cesare Servi’s garden. If she were aware of anything besides the night, Marguerite might have acknowledged carrying with her that evening the omnipresent parasitic sense of expectancy that she had always hosted; the pearl of hope that had accumulated around the wound which was consciousness. The expectancy of something great, some moment of grace that could, if the wind lay right, blow her way. She asked only to recognize the moment. For grace lies totally in its acceptance.

At their arrival Alberto’s lapel badge made a ripple of success that carried him off and away on the attentions of Aurelia Eccli. Louis, distinguished and poised, got taken in hand, along with Irene, by Cesare with his proficient English and his literary interest in the psychoanalytic process. Marguerite looked around: Whom did she know there? Leone Eccli. She took a long drink from a tray proffered by a waiter and started to make her way toward where Leone was talking to a serious, dark-haired man.

By the time she had crossed the room through the groups of guests, Leone had moved on and Marguerite found herself next to the serious, dark-haired man. “Are you a writer, too?” she asked.

“Among other things . . . Massimo Bontelli.”

“I’m Marguerite Morosini.”

“Alberto’s wife?”

“Do you know Alberto?”

“By name of course.” He was not as young as he seemed from a distance. His tanned face and full, dark hair and leanness made him seem so among the gathering of paunchy, balding, dark-suited men. Bontelli was different not only in his youthfulness but also in the kind of wary self-consciousness that again set him off from the confidence and aplomb around them.

He was nervous, his brow furrowed with some kind of anxiety, and he spoke in rapid, short bursts, his dark eyes wandering over the room restlessly as he spoke. “I met Morosini a few years ago when he was judge at the Viareggio awards. My first book was up for the prize.”

“Did you get it?”

“No. They told me it was a winner. Then they switched at the last moment and gave it to some woman writer who hasn’t written another word since.”

“Oh, I remember that. Disgusting. I was there, too. But that was your first book?” she asked curiously.

“I’m forty-three, and I’ve just started writing.”

And I, I’m just starting everything, she thought.

He was smoking, she looked around to see where Alberto was. Bontelli hadn’t yet looked at her directly. She felt he was as alone as she in that room and as timid. It gave her courage.