The day he and Nan had sat together on the beach at Marblehead and listened to the waves hiss and rattle among the pebbles and thought how all the strength of Wenny, now that he was dead, might perhaps ... Poor Nan, if I'd had the nerve ... He looked at his watch. Half past. At the same moment the ship's whistle started booming loud and throbbing. The noise tailed off into a harsh wail. Tarred and feathered and drawn in a cart By the women of Marblehead. Wenny used to sing that. Poor kid, he'd had nerve enough. The time he and Wenny had walked at night down a street in Somerville where the rare arclights were pinkish blobs among the shuddering green fringes of elms and Wenny had wanted to pick up a girl. Stumpy girls with heavy jowls strolling in couples, swaying from the hips. It was mostly the ugliness ... Yohimbine. Tina had been pretty in her pink dress. And now I'm going back. Venetian Art and Culture in the Eighteenth Century. The afterglow of the Renaissance. In a vermilion barge, lost ... in the Charles, Wenny had said. And Nan had understood; she had never been surprised at Wenny's killing himself. Perhaps they'd had secrets, things in common, the two of them, that he had never known. Exit to Massachusetts Avenue and the College Yard, and the museum and tea with professors' wives. Think of going back to that after this life overseas. If he could love Nan, if he could take her, it would be different. That was hopeless, dead as Wenny, dead as grand opera. "Gosh, I don't see it ... Going home after this," Baldwin had said, and they had leaned out together over the gold and rusty roofs and the domes and obelisks swaying in the great waves of honeycolored sunlight, and smelt gardens and scorched olive oil, and seen a girl with a brown throat come out of an arbor beneath them. Suppose he didn't go ... There was time to get off the boat. One crazy thing in a lifetime. He got to his feet, his heart dancing. I won't go. A bell started ringing far away on another deck. That means there's five minutes. There's time. I can get another Red Cross job. He picked up a suitcase and opened the varnished door. The companionway was full of people, officers, Red Cross men, buzz and chatter of farewells. Fanshaw slammed the door of his stateroom and pushed his suitcase back under his bunk. Don't be a fool. He threw himself on his back on his bunk and put his hand over his eyes. Once they got out of sight of land he'd get a good nap. Now he must go up on deck and take a last look at Palermo. A fine sight: the town piling up to Monreale, and the gardens, and behind them the cloudy dark hills of Sicily. I've been thinking too much. I won't think of anything any more.