She got off the wall and moved to the other side of the garden, where in a wooden shed were some comfortable low cane chairs.  All she wanted was to turn one of these round with its back to Domenico and its front to the sea towards Genoa.  Such a little thing to want.  One would have thought she might have been allowed to do that unmolested.  But he, who watched her every movement, when he saw her approaching the chairs darted after her and seized one and asked to be told where to put it.

Would she never get away from being waited on, being made comfortable, being asked where she wanted things put, having to say thank you?  She was short with Domenico, who instantly concluded the sun had given her a headache, and ran in and fetched her a sunshade and a cushion and a footstool, and was skilful, and was wonderful, and was one of Nature’s gentlemen.

She shut her eyes in a heavy resignation.  She could not be unkind to Domenico.  She could not get up and walk indoors as she would have done if it had been one of the others.  Domenico was intelligent and very competent.  She had at once discovered that it was he who really ran the house, who really did everything.  And his manners were definitely delightful, and he undoubtedly was a charming person.  It was only that she did so much long to be let alone.  If only, only she could be left quite quiet for this one month, she felt that she might perhaps make something of herself after all.

She kept her eyes shut, because then he would think she wanted to sleep and would go away.

Domenico’s romantic Italian soul melted within him at the sigh, for having her eyes shut was extraordinarily becoming to her.  He stood entranced, quite still, and she thought he had stolen away, so she opened them again.

No; there he was, staring at her.  Even he.  There was no getting away from being stared at.

“I have a headache,” she said, shutting them again.

“It is the sun,” said Domenico, “and sitting on the wall without a hat.”

“I wish to sleep.”

“Si signorina,” he said sympathetically; and went softly away.

She opened her eyes with a sigh of relief.  The gentle closing of the glass doors showed her that he had not only gone quite away but had shut her out in the garden so that she should be undisturbed.  Now perhaps she would be alone till lunch-time.

It was very curious, and no one in the world could have been more surprised than she herself, but she wanted to think.  She had never wanted to do that before.  Everything else that it is possible to do without too much inconvenience she had either wanted to do or had done at one period or another of her life, but not before had she wanted to think.  She had come to San Salvatore with the single intention of lying comatose for four weeks in the sun, somewhere where her parents and friends were not, lapped in forgetfulness, stirring herself only to be fed, and she had not been there more than a few hours when this strange new desire took hold of her.