Cynthia met his smile with one as friendly. “It is nice, isn’t it,” she said, for no particular reason except that one so often does speak to fellow Americans on foreign soil. Then she started to turn away.
“They’re having a prove, in the Piazza del Campo, this morning,” he informed her. “Perhaps you’d like to see that too?”
“Oh are they? Thank you,” said Cynthia, and this time she really did turn away. She had already seen one of the proves, the rehearsal for the big race, and thought she’d prefer, instead of seeing this one, to find a place to sketch. With her final cover off to America she was free now to sketch wherever she pleased, and she had an idea that she might work up material for an exhibition, back in New York. The heads to be her main attraction but perhaps a few landscapes to add a little variety to the show.
That afternoon she saw the man again. She had taken her sketch box and camp stool, and having hired a tiny barouche, was set down about two miles out of Siena where a little old monastery sat atop a tall hill. Here among the cypresses she could sketch for an hour, or two, or three, nibble her apple and sandwiches, and in the cool of later afternoon pack her box and walk back to town.
Cynthia had chosen a shady angle of the wall, and had roughed in her drawing; a bit of a gateway tiled in warm red, and a tall niche where stood a della robbia madonna robed in blue as deep as the Italian sky. Bougainvillea spilled in a fountain of magenta over the wall, and Cynthia was struggling with this riot of color when she heard the clopity-clop of horses’ hoofs, but did not look up. Color dried so swiftly in this warm dry air, one had no time for distractions.
Then there were voices, two, a man’s and a woman’s, the feminine voice light, pleasant, but pitched to a note of amused complaint that was vaguely familiar. Cynthia could not help overhearing.
“Why on earth you had to drag me way out here, Gerald! Oh, of course the road was lovely, but we have so little time in Siena and I did want to get in some more shopping ...”
“Shopping! Always shopping! Don’t you get enough shops in the States?” replied the man’s voice in very husbandly tones.
“Now Gerald, you remember I didn’t really want to come to Siena in the first place, but then of course I had no idea the leather and the iron work was so lovely here.”
Leather, that was it! The woman who had bought the cigarette boxes this morning. And the man with her? Cynthia, absent-mindedly wiping her brush on her white skirt said a faint “Darn!” for the color was rose madder and probably would stain ... peered out from behind her wall. The man was her nice gray haired acquaintance. Well, his trip to the monastery was no business of hers.