When I missed her at Milan, I abandoned my pursuit of her. Now that the temptation was over, I realized how near we had come to wrecking each other’s lives. Physical lassitude overtook me. Because I had withstood Fiesole, I thought myself safe in indulging my fancy with more intimate thoughts of Vi. I excused myself for so doing, by telling myself that it was her memory that had made me strong to escape. It was like saying that because water had rescued me from fire it could no longer drown me. I traveled northwards into the mountains to Raveno. Each morning I rowed across Maggiore to the island of Isola Madre. Lying beneath the camphor trees, watching the turquoise of the lake filling in the spaces between the yellowing bamboo canes, I gave rein to my longing. Shadowy foliage dripped from shadowy trees, curtaining the glaring light; down spy-hole vistas of overgrown pathways I watched the lazy world drift by. I numbed my cravings with the opiate of voluptuous beauty. I had been there a fortnight when a letter from home arrived. With its confident domestic chatter, it brought a message of trust. It took from me my sense of isolation. One of them would understand. Slowly the thought had taken shape within me that I must go to Vi. If I saw her only once again, I believed that I would be satisfied. It would not be necessary to speak to her--that would be unsportsmanlike if she had managed to forget me. All I asked was to be allowed just once to look upon her face. She should not know that I was near her; I would look at her and go away. With that strange sophistry that we practise on ourselves, I tried to be persuaded that, were I to see her in her own surroundings with her husband and Dorrie, it would be a lesson to me of how little share I had in her life. Perhaps I had even idealized her memory; seeing her might cure me. So I reasoned, but I was conscious that my own judgment on the wisdom of such a step was not to be trusted. Ruthita was too young to tell. My father, though I admired him, was not the man to whom a son would willingly betray a weakness. I would speak to the Snow Lady. As I drove from the station through London, old scenes and memories woke to life. The city had spread out towards Stoke Newington, so that it had lost much of its quaintness; but it retained enough of its old-world quiet to put me in touch with my childhood.