When he sat down, he noticed that the sculptor Andersen, who had been watching him, had tears in his eyes, and he noticed him further as he listened patiently to the Baroness von Rabe discuss the merits of her brother the novelist Marion Crawford and those of Mrs Humphrey Ward.

‘They have, of course,’ she said, ‘a very great talent, and they are popular with the reading public on both sides of the Atlantic. And they treat Italian subjects very beautifully, perhaps because they understand Italy, and their characters are so refined. I and many others have enjoyed reading their work. They will endure, I think.’

The Baroness, in finishing, looked at Henry as though daring him to contradict her. Clearly, he had displeased her, and she seemed uncertain whether she had made herself disagreeable enough. He sat with her as she made up her mind that she had not.

‘I read several articles by your brother William, and then a whole book of his,’ she said. ‘It was given to me by an old friend who knew all of you in Boston, and in a note he said to me that your brother’s style was the very model of clarity, not a word wasted, and no nonsense, every sentence beginning and ending in exactly the right place.’

He listened as though the Baroness were describing a very large and delicious meal she had devoured, nodding regularly. No one else was paying any attention to them except Andersen who smiled at Henry when he glanced at him; his expression seemed to make clear that he understood what was taking place. Henry, Andersen’s eyes said, had all his sympathy. The Baroness was not yet finished.

‘I remember you when you were young and all the ladies followed you, nay fought with each other to go riding with you. That Mrs Sumner and young Miss Boott and young Miss Lowe. All the young ladies, and others not so young. We all liked you, and I suppose you liked us as well, but you were too busy gathering material to like anyone too much. You were charming of course, but you were like a young banker collecting our savings. Or a priest listening to our sins. I remember my aunt warning us not to tell you anything.’

She leaned towards him conspiratorially.

‘And I think that is what you are still doing. I don’t think you have retired. I wish, however, that you would write more clearly and I’m sure the young sculptor, who is watching you, I’m sure he wishes the same.’

Henry smiled at her and bowed.

‘As you know, I do my best to please you.’

As others began to distract the Baroness and absorb her attention, Henry moved towards Andersen.

‘I thought that your speech was magnificent,’ the sculptor said. Henry was surprised at how American his accent sounded.

‘And I do not know what the old lady was saying to you, but I think that you are a very patient listener.’

‘She spoke,’ Henry said quietly, ‘as she promised not to – of old times.’

‘I loved what you said about Rome. It made us all wish we had been here then.’

Andersen had been leaning against the wall, but now he stood to his full height. The expression on his face was almost solemn and, although he commanded a view of the entire room, he directed his attention only to Henry. After a few moments, he moved his mouth as though he wished to speak but clearly thought better of it. In the shadowy light of the apartment, he veered between displaying a vulnerability, an extraordinary, half-blank handsomeness and a strangely thoughtful introspection. He swallowed nervously before he whispered.

‘Obviously, you love Rome and you have been happy here.’

It was close to a question and he watched Henry, waiting for a response; Henry merely nodded, conscious of the mixture of strength in the frame and a kind of weakness, like sadness, in the eyes of the sculptor.

‘Do you have a place you go to, I mean a monument or a painting in Rome that you love and visit regularly?’ the sculptor asked him.

‘I have been going almost daily to the Protestant cemetery which I suppose is in itself a work of art, an important monument, but perhaps you meant-’

‘No,’ Andersen interrupted him, ‘that is what I meant. I asked you the question because whatever it is, I should like to accompany you there. Even if it is your habit to go alone, I would ask you to make an exception.’

Henry could see an earnestness breaking through the shyness with some resolve and determination. He had expected another tone altogether, intense perhaps, but ironic as well, and rather more easy and worldly. This moved him with its sincerity, its lack of any reserve.

‘I should like to do this soon,’ Andersen said.

‘Tomorrow at eleven, then,’ Henry said simply. ‘We can meet at my hotel and set out together. Have you not been to the cemetery before?’

‘I have been there, sir, but I should like to go again, and shall look forward to tomorrow.’

Andersen gazed at him for a moment, having noted the name of the hotel, and did not smile and then bowed and made his way artfully across the room.

IN THE MORNING Andersen, Henry saw, was nervous and shy. He did not speak when Henry appeared, merely offered his customary bow. Henry could not tell how alert he was to his own handsomeness, a handsomeness which, when he smiled, gave way to an astonishing clear-eyed beauty. As they made their way by cab to the old walled graveyard near the pyramid, Andersen’s expression managed to be both searching and tenderly hesitant at the same time. Even though he spoke like an American, he did not have the calm and confident manners of one. Henry wondered if his seeming indifference to his own appeal, his lack of brashness and his intense presence arose simply from his Scandinavian origin. Yet when Andersen alighted from the cab and turned and waited for him at the gate, there was an aggression in his movements which belonged to someone more confident than he seemed when he smiled or spoke or allowed his face to rest.

For Henry the cemetery, more than any of the city’s monuments or works of art or famous buildings and thoroughfares, was the place where art and nature had most sonorously and resonantly combined, and now, in the shade offered by the gnarled, thickgrowing black cypresses and the well-worn paths and the carefully tended flowers and shrubs, it was a place of comfort, of great warm peace. As they walked directly towards the pyramid itself and the grave of the poet Keats it seemed to him that Andersen’s shyness and reticence had cast a spell on them both which could not be easily broken in this most solemn of places.

He was not sure if Andersen was aware of the story of Keats’s last days in the city, or even if he knew that the gravestone, which was not inscribed with the poet’s name, marked his final resting place. Henry felt acutely the sculptor’s presence; he liked being beside him, the silence broken by birdsong, with only cats for company; and the sense of the dead, including the tragic young poet, deeply at rest, protected in warm, rich earth. And the air all around, the clear sky and the secluded spaces of the cemetery, proclaiming that with rest came the end of sorrow; and this rest seemed to him now, on a May morning in Rome, suffused with love or something close to it.

They walked quietly and at random through the graveyard. Andersen held his hands behind his back, and read each inscription and then remained as though at prayer. Henry was his guide only in that he moved when Henry moved and stood still when Henry stopped.

‘The names never cease to interest me,’ Henry said. ‘The sad names of the English who died in Rome.’

He sighed.

Andersen shook his head briefly and turned to study the skinny tan-coloured cat which hovered behind him, tail in the air. Henry looked around too, as the cat purred lazily and narrowed its eyes and then moved against the back of Henry’s legs, pushing the full weight of its bony body against him, rubbing itself, and then moving nonchalantly away to find a spot in sunlight and settle there.