to teach her Italian. Indeed her chief
teacher, at first, was a young fellow called Bussolo. He was a model
from London, and he came down to Califano sometimes, hanging about,
anxious to speak English.

Alvina did not care for him. He was a dandy with pale grey eyes and
a heavy figure. Yet he had a certain penetrating intelligence.

"No, this country is a country for old men. It is only for old men,"
he said, talking of Pescocalascio. "You won't stop here. Nobody
young can stop here."

The odd plangent certitude in his voice penetrated her. And all the
young people said the same thing. They were all waiting to go away.
But for the moment the war held them up.

Ciccio and Pancrazio were busy with the vines. As she watched them
hoeing, crouching, tying, tending, grafting, mindless and utterly
absorbed, hour after hour, day after day, thinking vines, living
vines, she wondered they didn't begin to sprout vine-buds and vine
stems from their own elbows and neck-joints. There was something to
her unnatural in the quality of the attention the men gave to the
wine. It was a sort of worship, almost a degradation again. And
heaven knows, Pancrazio's wine was poor enough, his grapes almost
invariably bruised with hail-stones, and half-rotten instead of
ripe.

The loveliness of April came, with hot sunshine. Astonishing the
ferocity of the sun, when he really took upon himself to blaze.
Alvina was amazed. The burning day quite carried her away. She loved
it: it made her quite careless about everything, she was just swept
along in the powerful flood of the sunshine. In the end, she felt
that intense sunlight had on her the effect of night: a sort of
darkness, and a suspension of life. She had to hide in her room till
the cold wind blew again.

Meanwhile the declaration of war drew nearer, and became inevitable.
She knew Ciccio would go. And with him went the chance of her
escape. She steeled herself to bear the agony of the knowledge that
he would go, and she would be left alone in this place, which
sometimes she hated with a hatred unspeakable. After a spell of hot,
intensely dry weather she felt she would die in this valley, wither
and go to powder as some exposed April roses withered and dried into
dust against a hot wall. Then the cool wind came in a storm, the
next day there was grey sky and soft air. The rose-coloured wild
gladioli among the young green corn were a dream of beauty, the
morning of the world. The lovel