lf to him two months ago.

_What is happening to me?_

"Many months have passed and much has happened, Madonna," he said,
"but--forgive me if I am too forward--I have found it impossible to
forget you. Now that we are together in a new city, I hoped to renew
your acquaintance."

"This endless moving about will be the death of me," said Ugolini
unhappily. "Papa le Gros no sooner arrives from England and is
officially elected than he tells us he will be crowned in Viterbo and
make that the new papal seat. I have hardly had time to unpack here in
Perugia."

"Your furnishings seem in good order to me, Your Eminence," said Simon
with a smile, looking around the large room with its row of large
windows, its thick carpeting, and its heavy black chairs and tables. A
large shield carved in stone over the fireplace behind Ugolini was
painted with five red bands on a white background.

"These are not mine," said Ugolini, waving a hand dismissively. "Not my
idea of comfortable surroundings at all. No, I simply bought this house
and its furnishings from a Genoese merchant who was using it only part
of the year. I would be ashamed to tell you how much I paid for it--you
would think me a fool. A typical Genoese, he took advantage of my need.
And now I must sell all, probably to the same merchant and probably at a
loss."

"That is another reason why I wanted to see you, Madonna Sophia," said
Simon. "I feared that you, like your good uncle, might find all this
uprooting tiresome and might return to Sicily, and I would be hard put
to find you again."

With an inward shudder, Sophia realized the strength of Simon's resolve
to possess her. Only the truth would kill that determination, and she
would never dare to tell him that. Besides, there was a part of her
that, mad as it was, delighted in seeing how powerfully he was drawn to
her.

"I am thinking of going home myself," said Ugolini. "What need for me to
go with the new pope on this tedious search for ever-safer safety?"

"If you returned to Sicily," said Simon to Sophia, "it might be ages
before I see you again."

His words frightened her. Was he about to ask Ugolini for her hand, and
how would the cardinal deal with that?

"Forgive me if I raise an unpleasant subject," said Ugolini, "but if
your Count Charles d'Anjou accepts the pope's offer of the crown of
southern Italy and Sicily, it may be a long time before any French
nobleman will be welcome in my homeland."

Th