She has answered sadly by one short, penetrating look.

Why does she hold her head lowered? What is she gazing at with attention, with such thoughtfulness? Is her life so hopelessly sad? And yet, in spite of everything, doesn't she carry that resignation with dignity, with pride, as if things had to remain as they were, as if that knowledge, which deprives her of joy, had given her some untouchabil-ity instead, some higher freedom found only in voluntary submission? Her obedience has the grace of triumph and of victory.

With her governess she sits on a bench facing me, and both are reading. Her white dress—I have never seen her wear any other color— lies like an open flower on the seat. Her slim dark legs are crossed in front of her with indescribable grace. To touch her body must, I imagine, be painful from the sheer holiness of such a contact.

Then having closed their books, they both rise. With one quick look Bianca acknowledges and returns my ardent greeting and walks away, disengaged, weaving her feet, meandering, melodiously keeping pace with the rhythm of the long, elastic steps of her governess.

XXII

I have investigated the whole area around the estate. I have walked several times around the high fence that surrounds that vast terrain. I have seen the white walls of the villa with its terraces and broad verandas from all angles. Behind the villa spreads a park and, adjoining it, a large plot of land without any trees. Strange structures, partly factories, partly farm buildings, stand there. I put my eye against a chink in the fence, and what I saw must have been an illusion. In the spring air, thinned by the heat, you can sometimes see distant things mirrored through miles of quivering air. All the same my head is splitting from contradictory thoughts. I must consult the stamp album again.

XXIII

Is it possible? Could Bianca's villa be an extraterritorial area under the safeguard of international treaties? To what astonishing assumptions does the study of the stamp album lead me! Am I alone in possession of this amazing truth? And yet one cannot treat lightly the evidence and arguments provided on this point by the stamp album.

Today I investigated the whole villa from nearby. For weeks I have been hanging around the crested wrought iron gate. My opportunity came when two large empty carriages drove out of the garden. The gates were left wide open and there was nobody in sight. I entered nonchalantly, produced my drawing book from my pocket and, leaning against a pillar of the gate, pretended to draw some architectural detail. I stood on a graveled path trod so many times by Bianca's light feet. My heart would stop still from blissful anticipation at the thought that I might see her emerging in a flimsy white dress from one of the French windows. But all the windows and doors had green sunshades drawn over them. Not even the slightest sound betrayed the life hidden in that house. The sky on the horizon was overcast; there was lightning in the distance. No breeze moved the warm rarefied air. In the quietness of that gray day only the chalk white walls of the villa spoke with the voiceless but expressive eloquence of their ornate architecture. Its elegance was repeated in pleonasms, in a hundred variations on the same motif. Along a blindingly white frieze, bas-relief garlands ran in rhythmic cadenzas to the left and right and stopped undecided at the corners. From the height of the central terrace a marble staircase descended, ceremonious and solemn, between smoothly running balusters and architectural vases, and, flowing broadly to the ground, seemed to arrange its train with a deep curtsy.

I have quite an acute sense of style. The style of that building worried and irritated me, although I could not explain why. Behind its restrained classicism, behind a seemingly cool elegance, some other, elusive influences were hiding. The design was too intense, too sharply pointed, too full of unexpected adornments.