"Rome is always Rome," she said, which was safer than identifying particular buildings, or even Forums, in it. "Nothing like it anywhere."
"How long can you stay, mother? I've got you a room in the house I'm lodging in. It's in a little street the other side of the Corso. Rather a mediæval street, I'm afraid. That is, it smells. But the rooms are clean."
"Oh, I'm not staying long.... We'll talk later; talk it all out. A thorough talk. When we get in. After a cup of tea...."
Mrs. Hilary remembered that Nan did not yet know why she had come. After a cup of strong tea.... A cup of tea first.... Coffee wasn't the same. One needed tea, after those awful Germans. She told Nan about these. Nan knew that she would have had tiresome travelling companions; she always did; if it weren't Germans it would be inconsiderate English. She was unlucky.
"Go straight to bed and rest when we get in," Nan advised; but she shook her head. "We must talk first."
Nan, she thought, looked pinched about the lips, and thin, and her black brows were at times nervous and sullen. Nan did not look happy. Was it guilt, or merely the chill morning air?
They stopped at a shabby old house in a narrow mediæval street in the Borgo, which had been a palace and was now let in apartments. Here Nan had two bare, gilded, faded rooms. Mrs. Hilary sat by a charcoal stove in one of them, and Nan made her some tea. After the tea Mrs. Hilary felt revived. She wouldn't go to bed; she felt that the time for the talk had come. She looked round the room for signs of Stephen Lumley, but all the signs she saw were of Nan; Nan's books, Nan's proofs strewing the table. Of course that bad man wouldn't come while she was there. He was no doubt waiting eagerly for her to be gone. Probably they both were....
3
"Nan—" They were still sitting by the stove, and Nan was lighting a cigarette. "Nan—do you guess why I've come?"
Nan threw away the match.