"Has it improved?"

    "Improved?"

    "Your serve, Mr. Strickland. We would all feel so much happier if you at least had something else to show for your absence."

    "I work hard," bleated Adam, "I work late."

    Professor Leonard reached for some papers stacked on the side table next to his chair. "Since you're here you might as well take this now." He flipped through the pile and pulled out Adam's essay. "I probably marked you lower than I should have done."

    "Oh," said Adam, a little put out.

    "Thinking about it, you might have had more of a point than I credited you with at first."

    "Which point was that?"

    "Don't flatter yourself, Mr. Strickland. To my knowledge—and I read it twice—you only made one point. The others were lifted straight from the books I suggested you read." He raised a long, bony finger. "And some I didn't suggest. . . which, I grant you, displays more initiative than most."

    He handed the essay over.

    "We'll discuss it at greater length another time. Now, your thesis. Have you had any further thoughts?"

    Adam had flirted with a couple of ideas—Islamic iconography in Romanesque architecture, the use of line in early Renaissance drawing—but the professor would recognize them for what they were: lazy speculations on some well-trodden fields of study. No, best to keep quiet.

    "Not really."

    "You still have a year, of course, but it's advisable to start applying yourself now, certainly if you wish to show us something of your true colors. Do you, Mr. Strickland?"

    "Yes," said Adam. "Of course."

    "How's your Italian?"

    "Okay. Rusty."

    "Good, then I might have something for you."

    The professor explained that he had recently been contacted by an old acquaintance of his. Signora Docci, the lady in question, was the owner of a large villa in the hills of Tuscany, just south of Florence.