world was suddenly right way up?
Philip smiled, and was shocked at himself for smiling, and smiled again.
For romance had come back to Italy; there were no cads in her; she was
beautiful, courteous, lovable, as of old. And Miss Abbott--she, too, was
beautiful in her way, for all her gaucheness and conventionality.
She really cared about life, and tried to live it properly. And
Harriet--even Harriet tried.

This admirable change in Philip proceeds from nothing admirable, and
may therefore provoke the gibes of the cynical. But angels and other
practical people will accept it reverently, and write it down as good.

"The view from the Rocca (small gratuity) is finest at sunset," he
murmured, more to himself than to her.

"And he never mentioned the baby once," Miss Abbott repeated. But she
had returned to the window, and again her finger pursued the delicate
curves. He watched her in silence, and was more attracted to her than he
had ever been before. She really was the strangest mixture.

"The view from the Rocca--wasn't it fine?"

"What isn't fine here?" she answered gently, and then added, "I wish I
was Harriet," throwing an extraordinary meaning into the words.

"Because Harriet--?"

She would not go further, but he believed that she had paid homage
to the complexity of life. For her, at all events, the expedition was
neither easy nor jolly. Beauty, evil, charm, vulgarity, mystery--she
also acknowledged this tangle, in spite of herself. And her voice
thrilled him when she broke silence with "Mr. Herriton--come here--look
at this!"

She removed a pile of plates from the Gothic window, and they leant out
of it. Close opposite, wedged between mean houses, there rose up one of
the great towers. It is your tower: you stretch a barricade between it
and the hotel, and the traffic is blocked in a moment. Farther up, where
the street empties out by the church, your connections, the Merli and
the Capocchi, do likewise. They command the Piazza, you the Siena gate.
No one can move in either but he shall be instantly slain, either by
bows or by crossbows, or by Greek fire. Beware, however, of the
back bedroom windows. For they are menaced by the tower of the
Aldobrandeschi, and before now arrows have stuck quivering over the
washstand. Guard these windows well, lest there be a repetition of the
events of February 1338, when the hotel was surprised from the rear, and
your dearest friend--you could just make out that it was h