By the same post she sent a note to her brother-in-law:
"Aldo, mon joli, do come. Carlo is insufferable. He growls all day and snores all night. Why did I marry him? This is the fourth time I invite you this year, and you never come. Last year it was different.
"Yours,
"Clarissa.
"P.S.—The little poetessa is going to stay here for a month."
He arrived next day. After greetings, he asked: "Where is Sappho, the violet-haired?" Clarissa explained that Nancy had not arrived, and he sulked and played the piano all the evening, while Carlo on the sofa snored. Clarissa looked from one to the other, uncertain which of the two was insulting her most.
Nancy arrived the following day. She had brought her notebooks with her and a broken ivory pen that she always wrote with; she was full of the masterpiece. She was going to work immediately.
Driving up from the landing-place to the Villa Solitudine she told her plans to Clarissa, who nodded and smiled as she whipped up the fat cob. She was going to write a book—The Book!—a great, noble piece of work, not a little volume of flyaway poems that one reads and forgets in a day. She was going to think of and dream of The Book; to live for The Book; to breathe and walk for it, to eat and sleep for it. In Milan, with people always round her, talking and distracting, it was impossible; but here in the large bare room at the top of the house——How sweet and dear of Clarissa to think of it! Never, never could Nancy thank her enough.... Clarissa nodded and smiled, and the fat cob turned into the chestnut drive of Villa Solitudine.
Down the steps, with a couple of dogs barking and leaping at his heels, came Aldo to meet them, clad in Neapolitan fashion in white flannels and scarlet sash. His uncovered head gleamed darkly in the sun.
"Behold Endymion awakened!" said Clarissa, laughing, to Nancy. "Charmides, Adonaïs, Narcissus! The gods have cast upon him all the beauty of the world!" As Nancy did not answer, Clarissa turned to look at her. "Oh, what a stern face, ma chérie! You are quite white. What are you thinking of?"
"The Book," said Nancy; and she felt as if it were a child of hers that was to die unborn.