The place on the river was beautiful. They sat on a shaded terrace overlooking a Tiber that was not the dirty downstream river that flowed sluggishly through the city, but a green swirling stream overhung by willows. A man in a canoe was paddling beneath them; two boys on the opposite bank were poking sticks into the water.

“I like this place,” she told him. “It’s like being in the country. What I miss most of America are the trees.”

“I saw Clotilde at the Strega, Marguerite.”

“And?”

“She asked me if you were still separated from Alberto. I said I didn’t know of any separation—that when I met you you were with him and I never heard any differently. Were you separated?”

He spoke deliberately. His eyes—light brown, large, shining, and curious as a boy’s—those eyes that usually were so distant were now carefully fixed on her. He had two looks: the distant one when he was reflective, thoughtful; and the sharp one of trying to seize precisely on things and know them exactly. He is still from the provinces, she thought, smiling at him; he is still guarded, suspicious, wary of quick actions. He likes to know how things stand and where his place is among them. Imagine with me, not only a strange female, but that quintessence of menace, an American female . . . the symbol of all that is most demanding and devouring of men. Aggressive, authoritarian, overly intellectual and systemized. No wonder he was so ultra-controlled with her. Hadn’t he for years, in his work as a journalist, been exposed to those odds and ends of information and newsbreaks that make up the pocket history of the American female? It was part of his culture. It gave him self-assurance and confidence to know things exactly—to fit her, for instance, into her slot. Fortunately, he also had resources of candor, humor, and irony. She recognized in him a fundamental integrity, the reserve of one who knows the value of things.

When he first came to Rome, he told her, just after the war, he had eaten at a mess set up near the station for those who had no work, no funds. And there each morning, early, when he arrived for his bread and caffè-latte, he would see an old woman put together the pieces of cardboard on which she slept each night, huddled against the remains of the antique wall that served as her shelter. With dignity, with exactness, she reassembled her cardboard dwelling, tucked it under her arm, and took her place in the food line. He had learned from her how one stayed attached to life.

“Massimo,” Marguerite said, “I was separated from Alberto for a few months but not anymore. I’ve accepted things as they are. . . . I belong with Alberto.” She returned his steady look.