He had replayed the night more than once in the past three months, revisiting it both for its intensity and its oddness and to convince himself that he had not dreamed it. At several points in the past three months he believed he had dreamed it, but this morning was not one of them. This morning he could clearly see them standing outside the door to her room at the pensione, kissing. Then whispering. “Henry, I’m afraid.” “You don’t need to be.” “All this seems hasty. And I’ve been hasty before.” “Before—with your husband?” “Not only him.” “Yet if there’s a feeling, a shared feeling?” She had her room key in her hand. She played with its stiff blue tassel for a moment, smoothing and ordering its fringe. Then she reached over and opened the door. They went inside. She turned toward him, and she began to shake. But she was not cold, it was impossible to be cold on that hot, heavy Florentine summer night. “Are you all right?” he had asked, and she had said, “Just hold me,” and he had held her. She had continued to shake. Somehow they ended up at first sitting together, then lying alongside each other, on her bed. She continued to tremble even as he stroked her hair and ran his hand down her back. “We can just lie here,” he said, “if that’s what you prefer.” She shook her head, then she sat up, took off her blouse, and unhooked her bra. Once she revealed herself to him, she stopped shaking. For a moment he just took her in. Then he kissed her neck, her shoulders, her chest. She unhooked his belt, unzipped his fly, and reached her hand into the depths of his crotch. She freed his cock, then swung around and took it into her mouth. The boldness of the gesture was as disconcerting as her trembling had been earlier. He would never have guessed that she would linger over the underside of his cock, licking and moistening it with her tongue until it began to quiver with such intense pleasure that he was afraid he was going to come in her mouth. He wouldn’t have guessed that she would have known just when to pause to allow him to wrestle out of his pants and shorts and to undo her own skirt and surprisingly minute panties. He wouldn’t have guessed that she would have directed his hand between her legs, either to give him guidance, or permission, or to show him just how saturated she was. He wouldn’t have guessed that she would have said, “I want you inside me” with such clarity, or that she would have followed the remark with a long kiss behind which he felt … ardor. All that dance of conversation over drinks and dinner seemed to vanish into that one kiss.