“Some do.”
“Ah, but not in the right way. They dig out a house-agent and inspect eligible villas and behave exactly as if they were moving from Bayswater to Hampstead, which in fact they are. I don’t want to adjust these surroundings to myself. I want to become an integral part of them. I should like to stay on in the Albergo del Sole without writing letters or getting letters. I should like to be sitting here when these crocuses have faded, and the grass is wine-stained by anemones or silvery with asphodels. I should like to watch the cistus petals fluttering to the hot earth, and to lie for hours listening to the cicali, lie and dream all through the Summer as still and hot as a terra-cotta shard, lie and dream until the black sirocco whips the orchards and spits into my face the first drops of autumn rain. But if I had to make arrangements for my business and explain that my nerves required a long rest, all the savour would be taken out of my whim. Oh, dio, I am as full to-day of yearnings for the au delà as a French symbolist, or a callow German who sees the end of his Wanderjahre looming.”
All the way back to the town Kenrick walked along beside Nancy in a moody silence. She felt that perhaps she had been too discouraging, and just before they emerged from the last of the olives she put a hand on his arm and said:
“Will it do anything to console you if I tell you how perfectly I have enjoyed these days here? I’m not an eloquent person, Mr. Kenrick.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake call me John. Haven’t you noticed I’ve been calling you Nancy all this time?”
“I’ll try to call you John,” she promised. “But it’s terribly hard for me to call people by their Christian names. I’m not an eloquent person ... John. In fact, I’m sort of tongue-tied. But surely you must realise what you’ve done for me.”
He stopped abruptly and looked into her eyes.
“Have I really done much?”
“Why, you know you have. You know you have. I was a touring actress without an idea of ever being anything else, and you’ve given me the chance to be something much more than that.”
“That’s all I’ve managed to do?” Kenrick asked.