"We've got to think now," he said, "what to do about it." To that thinking Peter offered no help and no hindrance. He sat in the road by the dead man and the bundle of wood, and looked vaguely on the remote morning that death had dimmed. Denis and death: Peter would have done a great deal to sever that incredible connection. But it was, after all, for Denis to effect that severing, to cut himself loose from that oppressing and impossible weight. He did so. "I don't see," said Denis, "that we need ... that we can ... do anything about it." Above the clear mountains the sun swung up triumphant, and the wide river valley was bathed in radiant gold. CHAPTER VI HILARY, PEGGY, AND HER BOARDERS When Leslie and Peter went to Venice to pick up Berovieri goblets and other things, Leslie stayed at the Hotel Europa and Peter in the Palazzo Amadeo. The Palazzo Amadeo is a dilapidated palace looking onto the Rio delle Beccarie; it is let in flats to the poor; and in the sea-story suite of the great, bare, dingy, gilded rooms lived Hilary and Peggy Margerison, and three disreputable infants who insisted on bathing in the canals, and the boarders. The boarders were at the moment six in number; Peter made seven. The great difficulty with the boarders, Peggy told him, was to make them pay. They had so little money, and such a constitutional reluctance to spend that little on their board. "The poor things," said Peggy, who had a sympathetic heart. "I'm sure I'm sorry for them, and I hate to ask them for it. But one's got to try and live." She was drying Illuminato (baptized in that name by his father's desire, but by his mother called Micky) before the stove in the great dining-room. Illuminato had just tumbled off the bottom step into the water, and had been fished out by his uncle Peter; he was three, and had humorous, screwed-up eyes and a wide mouth like a frog's, so that Hilary, who detested ugliness, could really hardly be fond of him. Peggy was; but then Peggy always had more sense of humour than Hilary. A boarder looked in to see if lunch was ready. It was not, but Peggy began preparations by screaming melodiously for Teresina. They heard the boarder sigh. He was a tall young man with inspired eyes and oily hair. Peter had observed him the night before, with some interest. "That's Guy Vyvian," Peggy told him, looking for Illuminato's dryer suit in the china cupboard. "Fancy," said Peter.