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of a stick, came up the path of College Sunrise. He was about thirty, she in her late teens.
    Elaine Valette opened the door. The couple introduced themselves: Giovanna and Israel Brown. It was exactly six thirty in the afternoon.
    “Mr. Mahler came to see us,” said Israel, “and so we have come to see him.”
    They were soon settled with Nina and Rowland on the terrace sipping drinks in the lovely evening air with the sun slanting over the western mountains.
    “Giovanna gave one of your students a fright with her ghostly violin,” said Israel. “In fact, she was bored. She hurt her leg and had to sit with it up.”
    “My young friend gathered so,” said Rowland. “That was his guess.”
    Giovanna was drinking a citron pressé, the others vodka tonics which Rowland had brought out to them.
    “It’s good to see neighbors,” Nina said. “We see few people who live here. Of course, the hotels are full of come-and-go people.”
    “You are listed as a finishing school. What exactly is a finishing school?” said Israel.
    “Generally,” said Rowland, “it’s a place where parents dump their teenage children after their schooldays and before their universities or their marriages or careers.”
    Giovanna said, “Polished off?”
    “Something like that,” Nina said. “We try to instruct them, though. I get scholars to come and lecture.”
    “Who is the red-haired young man who was serenaded by Giovanna?”
    “I wouldn’t say red,” said Nina. “I’d say his hair was orange. He’s very brilliant. He’s writing an historical novel.”
    “Is it good?” said Israel.
    “So far as we know,” Rowland said. “Lately he’s being very secretive about it. I think he’s probably lost his way.”
    “Not him,” said Nina. “Not Chris.”
    “Floundering around, that’s what,” said Rowland. “What can you expect at seventeen?”
    Chris thought, when he heard of this visit at dinnertime, They might have asked me to join them. Pigs. So he said, “Today I managed to complete two long chapters. Difficult ones.”
    Rowland smiled, but put down his knife and fork definitively. “When are we going to see them, the new chapters?”
    “Oh, now I’ll wait till the book’s finished.”
    He thinks it is a game he is playing with Rowland, Nina reflected. He doesn’t realize how seriously Rowland is affected. She looked at Rowland’s unfinished supper and felt a wave of panic. She was afraid that something was happening to Rowland beyond explanation, with which she would be unable to cope.
    “Chris,” she said, “you know, that violinist is a pretty girl. You’d like her.”
    “A bit too old for him,” said Rowland. “She must be eighteen, nineteen . . .”
    “I might go round and see,” said Chris cheerfully.
    “Good idea,” said Nina. “Take a rest from your book.”
    “Oh yes,” he said, for all the world as if he were an established man of letters. He spoke English now. “One does have to pause from time to time, if only to take stock of what one has written and where one stands.”
    That repetitive use of “one” nettled Nina. “I suppose one does,” she said.
    Chris went for a walk after dinner, dutifully reporting the fact to Rowland.
    At the house of the violin everything was dark.
    Nonetheless Chris went up to the door and pressed the bell. After a while there appeared from round the side of the house the same elderly caretaker.
    “You are looking for M’selle and Monsieur Brown?”
    “That’s right. I’d like to see them.”
    “They left an hour ago, or an hour and a half . . .”
    “Oh, will they be back?”
    “One never knows. I have no information. They received your last message.”
    “Yes, I know.”
    “Do you find,” said Rowland to Chris, “that at a certain point your characters are taking over and living a life of their own?”
    “I don’t know what you mean,” Chris said.
    “I mean, once you have created the characters, don’t you sort of dream of them or