“Near that tuft of palm-trees. Don't you know?”
“No,” said Aaron.
“Let us go out and show it him,” said the Marchesa.
Manfredi fetched her a cloak, and they went through various doors, then up some steps. The terrace was broad and open. It looked straight across the river at the opposite Lungarno: and there was the thin-necked tower of the Palazzo Vecchio, and the great dome of the cathedral in the distance, in shadow-bulk in the cold-aired night of stars. Little trams were running brilliant over the flat new bridge on the right. And from a garden just below rose a tuft of palm-trees.
“You see,” said the Marchesa, coming and standing close to Aaron, so that she just touched him, “you can know the terrace, just by these palm trees. And you are in the Nardini just across there, are you? On the top floor, you said?”
“Yes, the top floor—one of the middle windows, I think.”
“One that is always open now—and the others are shut. I have noticed it, not connecting it with you.”
“Yes, my window is always open.”
She was leaning very slightly against him, as he stood. And he knew, with the same kind of inevitability with which he knew he would one day die, that he would be the lover of this woman. Nay, that he was her lover already.
“Don't take cold,” said Manfredi.