‘Do you challenge every man you meet?’

‘Only the ones I think need it.’

‘I could make the obvious answer to that, but let’s have a truce instead.’

‘As long as it’s armed,’ she reminded him.

‘My truces are always armed.’

He stopped a passing young woman and spoke to her in Venetian. When she’d departed he said,

‘I asked her to bring us some refreshment outside, where we can sit down.’

Outside was a wooden seat on a terrace that overlooked a small canal with shops along the bank. It was pleasant to sit there drinking coffee.

‘Is this your first visit to Venice?’ he asked.

‘Yes, I’ve thought about it for years but never got around to it before.’

‘Do you travel alone?’

‘Quite alone.’

‘I find that hard to believe.’

‘I wonder why.’

‘Let us not play games. You don’t need me to say that a woman as beautiful as you need never lack company.’

‘But perhaps you need to hear that a woman may prefer to be alone. It isn’t always the man’s choice, you know. Sometimes she consults her own preferences and consigns men to the devil.’

He gave a wry smile. ‘Touché! I suppose I asked for that.’

‘You certainly did.’

‘And have you consigned us all to the devil?’

‘Some of you. There are men who are fit for nothing else.’

He nodded. ‘You must have met quite a few of them.’

‘A fair number. The virtues of solitude can be very appealing.’

‘And so you travel alone,’ he said slowly.

‘Alone-but not lonely.’

That seemed to disconcert him. After a moment he said quietly, ‘Then you must be the only person who isn’t.’

‘To be enough for yourself,’ she answered, ‘safe from the onslaughts of other people, and happy to be so-it isn’t really very hard.’

‘That’s not true, and you know it,’ he replied, looking at her intently. ‘If you’ve achieved it, you’re one in a million. But I don’t believe that you have achieved it. It’s your way of fooling the world-or yourself.’