Fumbling in the pocket of her silk jacket she found a single lira and on impulse flipped it into the air. It dropped into her lap and she covered it quickly with her hand.
“Heads; I’ll get off at the very next stop, no matter if it’s in the middle of a field. Tails; I’ll go on to Venice, no matter how late we get there or how hungry I am,” she said aloud.
She uncovered the coin. Heads it was!
Cynthia was a little scared. But determined, oh very determined. Resolutely she took down her suitcase from the rack, swung her painting box beside it. Firmly she waited by the open window till the train banged again to a stop beside a little shack that served as a station. The sign read Santa Maria Something-or-other, a name which meant nothing to Cynthia. Sturdily she stepped backward down the three steep steps to the ground, swung her box and suitcase off beside her and turning her back on the poky little train walked toward the gate.
“Tomorrow ... tomorrow morning I go to Venice,” she explained to the gatekeeper who was punching lacework patterns into her ticket. “Domani. Comprendo?”
“Si, si.” Wonderingly he let her pass. Not until the gate had closed firmly did Cynthia feel sure that she herself wouldn’t turn and race toward the departing train, the train that eventually must reach Venice.
When the last shriek of the whistle had died along the echoing hills, when the last smudge of smoke had disappeared against the dazzling light of the sinking sun, Cynthia was plodding almost ankle deep in dust along the wide path that seemed to do duty as the town road. But there was literally no town here. Far off across the plowed fields a sugar white tower reared against the skyline; the village church. Four or five scattered houses with the inevitable grape vine, their whitewashed sides stained verdigris green with arsenic spray, and a tiny inn to which the gateman had directed her. This latter was her objective.
Its entrance was beneath a vine covered lattice and its bare dirt floor, its collection of dogs looked much like the other farmhouses. But inside there were several tables and a girl behind a counter. She slid forward and smiled shyly with a flutter of incredible lashes. Cynthia felt reassured.
Stumblingly she asked for a room for the night, explained her wish to be called early for the first train for Venice.
Yes, signorina, there was a room, but one. The signorina should regard it.