come out through the glass door and 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 actually 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 at 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 cause 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 directed the placing of a cabinet of curios across the door on its inside.

This would discourage egress.

Then she rang for Domenico, and caused him to move one of the flower-filled sarcophagi across the door on its outside.

This would discourage ingress.

“No one,” said Domenico, hesitating, “will be able to use the door.”

“No one,” said Mrs. Fisher firmly, “will wish to.”

She then retired to her sitting-room, and from a chair placed where she could look straight on to them, gazed at her battlements, secured to her now completely, with calm pleasure.