Fanshaw opened his eyes, stretched himself in bed, and was aware hazily of luminous grey sheets of rain outside the window. He reached for his watch and his glasses. Seven-forty-three; that means ten minutes more of delicious languor. He took off his glasses again and lay staring at the ceiling, happily thinking of nothing. The steam pipes were popping and cracking, and there was a dribble of water from the bathroom. Ought to have them fix that faucet. His mind was groping to remember what the nine o'clock section meeting would be about. Fra Angelico, Lorenzo Monaco, Gozzoli, names of Italian painters streamed through his head. But we're through with them; must be about the Dutch, some Fleming. Why cudgel his brains? This was April: April, May, June, then the treadmill stopped. Freedom. Imagine living always free like a Chinese sage in a hut of rice-matting beside a waterfall; to retire to an exquisite pavillion ornamented with red and black lacquer, living on rice and tea and trout from the stream. The mist steaming up out of the valleys and the constant shimmer of moisture on the green, delicate leaves of ferns. And Wenny for an attendant to carry the begging bowl, or Wenny, brown from the sun, gleaming with sweat as he worked the rice fields with a piece of scarlet cloth about his loins. Days eternal with quiet to elaborate thoughts of such subtlety that ... How delicious to lie here and let his mind ramble. And Nan. Only five thousand a year would do amply for a villa in Italy somewhere, perhaps on the shore near Sorrento. The old dream of love; roses handed over supper-tables at Capri, on a terrace with low music ... Sweet and low, sweet and low, wind of the western sea ... and the moon rising out of the dark sea. No, Capri would be too crowded, full of noisy, fast people. A grey old house somewhere with a courtyard. Mr. and Mrs. J. Fanshaw Macdougan, at home. Nan the way she had looked that night at the fancy dress party at the Logans, her hair caught back from her forehead under a jewelled net, playing the violin in a long-raftered hall, a little musty with the smell of the old incense-drenched tapestries, and through the windows in great, cool gusts the smell of jessamine from the garden. Little trips to hilltowns to look at frescoes, caffe con latte in station restaurants, jokes about Karl Baedeker, a cab rattling pleasantly over the cobblestones driven by a brown youth with a flower behind his ear... Then he thought of his mother's wrinkled cheeks against the pillow and the peevish lines at the ends of her mouth. Poor lamb. He jumped up with a jerk and looked at his watch. Lord, a quarter past eight. I shan't have time to shave. He ran, shivering a little, to shut the window. What beastly weather to be having in April.