He thought of Sophy Jason, sitting on the Palatine Hill, her hair lifted from her forehead by the evening breeze and a look of pleased bewilderment in her face. A remote sort of girl, a restful girl who didn’t say anything silly, he thought, and then wondered if, after all, ‘restful’ was quite the word for her. He leant over his window-sill and looked at the façades and roofs and distant cupolas.

The clock struck eight. A horse-carriage rattled through the cobbled street below, followed by a succession of motorbicycles and cars. In an upstairs room across the street an excited babble of voices erupted and somewhere deep inside the house a remorseless, untrained tenor burst into song. Farther along the second floor of the Pensione Gallico a window was thrown up and out looked Sophy, dressed in white.

He watched her rest her arms on the window ledge, dangle her hands and sniff the evening air. How strange it was to look at someone who was unaware of being observed. She was turned away from him and craned towards the end of their street where spray from a fountain in Navona could just be seen catching the light in a feathered arc. He watched her with a sense of guilt and pleasure. After a moment or two he said: ‘Good evening.’

She was still for a moment and then slowly turned to him. ‘How long have you been there?’ she asked.

‘No time at all. You’re ready, I see. Shall we go?’

‘If you like: yes, shall we?’

It was cooler out of doors. As they entered Navona the splashing of water, by its very sound, freshened the evening air. The lovely piazza sparkled, lights danced in cascades of water, glared from headlamps and glowed in Tre Scalini caffè.

‘There’s a table,’ Grant said. ‘Let’s nab it, quickly.’

It was near the edge of the pavement. Their view of Navona was minimal. To Sophy this was of small matter. It suited her better to be here, hemmed in, slightly jostled, bemused, possibly bamboozled in some kind of tourist racket, than to be responding to Rome with scholarly discretion and knowledgeable good taste and a reserve which in any case she did not command.

This is magic,’ she said, beaming at Grant. ‘That’s all. It’s magic. I could drink it.’

‘So you shall,’ he said, ‘in the only possible way,’ and ordered champagne cocktails.