Ben stared at her, appalled.

Julia extracted a fresh cigarette from the silver box she carried. 'Oh, don't look so shocked, Benjamin. I apologise for keeping it from you. But you'd hardly have slept with me if you'd known, would you? Let's get on with it. You met in Spain, during the Civil War.'

Hesitantly, uncomfortable, Rory spoke.

When only twenty-two, Rory had moved to New York from his native Dublin, ostensibly to study. But, a strong-minded idealist, he had quickly made a name for himself as an outspoken columnist. Then he had gone to Spain to work on a book on the seven-centuries-long history of coexistence and conflict between Christianity and Islam in the peninsula.

'I was in Seville when it all kicked off. The Civil War. The city fell to Franco's Nationalists within days. The bloodshed was worse after the cities fell, as the Nationalists took reprisals. So I fled north, to the Republican areas.'

'And there he met you?' Julia asked Ben.

Ben said reluctantly, 'I had already seen enough of the fascists in Germany. I went out to fight in the International Brigades. I never went back to Austria after that. I got some help from the Americans in my brigade, and they eventually got me into the country, and a place here at Princeton to continue my studies.'

Julia said briskly, 'I've never been terribly impressed by the Spaniards. They had all that wealth, a global empire, gold from the Incas and the Aztecs. And they blew the lot on dynastic wars within a century of Columbus. As for their Civil War, what a pointless conflict that was!'

'Three hundred and fifty thousand died,' Rory said angrily. 'Many of them to German and Italian bombs and bullets.'

'New ways of fighting wars were rehearsed. An imperial nation was reduced to a testing ground for the weapons of superior powers. So much for Spain!'