Over the windows of a large shop filled with white crosses, broken columns and statues, I read the legend: “Anglo-American Tombstone Company.” We emerged from the narrow street on to an embankment running along the edge of a river. From the opposite bank the ground rose steeply. “There,” said Mrs. Aldwinkle on a note of triumph as we crossed the bridge, “that’s my house.” She pointed up. From the hill-top a long façade stared down through twenty windows; a tall tower pricked the sky. “The palace was built in 1630,” she began. I even enjoyed the history lesson. We had crossed the bridge, we were climbing by a steep and winding road through what was almost a forest of olive trees. The abrupt grassy slope had been built up into innumerable little terraces on which the trees were planted. Here and there, in the grey luminous shadow beneath the trees, little flocks of sheep were grazing. The barefooted children who attended them came running to the side of the road to watch us passing. “I like to think of these old princely courts,” Mrs. Aldwinkle was saying. “Like abbeys of ... abbeys of....” She shook her brandy flask impatiently. “You know ... in Thingumy.” “Abbeys of Thelema,” I suggested. “That’s it,” said Mrs. Aldwinkle. “Sort of retiring-places where people were free to live intelligently. That’s what I want to make this house. I’m so delighted to have met you like this. You’re exactly the sort of person I want.” She leaned forward, smiling and glittering. But even at the prospect of entering the Abbey of Thelema I did not blench. At this moment the car passed through a huge gateway. I caught a glimpse of a great flight of steps, set between cypresses, mounting up past a series of terraced landings to a carved doorway in the centre of the long façade. The road turned, the car swung round and the vista was closed. By an ilex avenue that wound round the flank of the hill we climbed more gradually towards the house, which we approached from the side. The road landed us finally in a large square court opposite a shorter reproduction of the great façade. At the head of a double flight of steps, curving horse-shoe fashion from the landing at its threshold, a tall pompous doorway surmounted by a coat of arms cavernously invited. The car drew up.