nd invade her battlements. This would ruin the battlements. It would
ruin them as far as she was concerned if they were to be overrun; or
even if, not actually overrun, they were liable to be raked by the
eyes of persons inside the room. No one could be perfectly at
ease if they were being watched and knew it. What she wanted, what she
surely had a right to, was privacy. She had no wish to intrude on the
others; why then should they intrude on her? And she could always
relax her privacy if, when she became better acquainted with her
companions, she should think it worth while, but she doubted whether
any of the three would so develop as to make her think it worth while.

Hardly anything was really worth while, reflected Mrs. Fisher,
except the past. It was astonishing, it was simply amazing, the
superiority of the past to the present. Those friends of hers in
London, solid persons of her own age, knew the same past that she knew,
could talk about it with her, could compare it as she did with the
tinkling present, and in remembering great men forget for a moment the
trivial and barren young people who still, in spite of the war, seemed
to litter the world in such numbers. She had not come away from these
friends, these conversable ripe friends, in order to spend her time in
Italy chatting with three persons of another generation and defective
experience; she had come away merely to avoid the treacheries of a
London April. It was true what she had told the two who came to Prince
of Wales Terrace, that all she wished to do at San Salvatore was to sit
by herself in the sun and remember. They knew this, for she had told
them. It had been plainly expressed and clearly understood. Therefore
she had a right to expect them to stay inside the round drawing-room
and not to emerge interruptingly on to her battlements.

But would they? The doubt spoilt her morning. It was only
towards lunch-time that she saw a way to be quite safe, and ringing for
Francesca, bade her, in slow and majestic Italian, shut the shutters of
the glass door of the round drawing-room, and then, going with her into
the room, which had become darker than ever in consequence, but also,
Mrs. Fisher observed to Francesca, who was being voluble, would because
of this very darkness remain agreeably cool, and after all there were
the numerous slit-windows in the walls to let in light and it was
nothing to do with her if they did not let it in, she dir