"Idols," he interrupted, but he turned to her and smiled as she had. "The Prophet ordered idols destroyed." "And therefore the art of painting languishes among you," she said, poking her forefinger into his shoulder. "Someday I will show you my paintings if you promise not to destroy them." His shoulder tingled where she had touched him. She must have been carried away by her feelings about the arts of her homeland to make such a gesture. Surely it could not have been deliberate. His hand rested between them on the edge of the fountain. He moved a bit closer to her so that the edge of his hand nearly touched her thigh. He nodded. "I will teach you the art of calligraphy as my Sufi master practiced it, and save your soul." _I would really like to do that. Ah, but I cannot teach her to write Arabic. What if someone were to see her practice work?_ He sighed inwardly. "Hm," she grunted. "I doubt that _you_ can save _my_ soul. But as for writing, we are familiar with dramatists like Sophocles, philosophers like Aristotle. We read Latin poets like Ovid, whose book I just gave to Rachel. Here in his native Italy his work is thought licentious." "I have read Aristotle and Plato in Arabic," he said. "And I have no doubt our Persian poets sing as gloriously as your Greeks and Latins. And for licentious tales, those told in our bazaars would turn your cheeks bright red." Those cheeks were a smooth cream color, he observed. He looked about him. There was no one but himself and Sophia in the atrium. A multistoried gallery lined with columns and arches ran around all four sides of the central courtyard. There might be servants, spies for the cardinal, watching them, but he could see no one on any of the levels. _To the devil with them all._ For weeks he had been wanting to reach out and touch that unveiled beauty, that ivory skin. Now he did it. Very lightly his fingers traveled from her cheekbone to her jaw. She reached up and took his hand--not to remove it, as he had momentarily thought she might, but to hold it briefly against her cheek, then let it go. They sat silently looking at each other. She was so still that she seemed not even to breathe, while he discovered that his heart was beating fast and hard. He wanted to kiss her, but not here, where hidden eyes might be watching. But kissing her at all would be a mistake. The thought shook him--the realization that he must not get any closer to her. He felt as if a rope were tied around his neck and a cruel slave master had jerked on it. _She is not for me. She is for my mission._ He turned away from her. "It is better if we do not grow too close," he said, fixing his eyes on a nearby orange tree. "I must use you. I will send you as my sultan has sent me, and you will lie with the man I choose as my quarry." He looked back and saw that she was smiling sadly, her eyes clouded with disappointment. It pleased him in a bittersweet way to see that she shared his unhappiness.