The waiter ejaculated with evident pleasure. Barnaby sat down abruptly on a chair that had become a bird-bath. The waiter ludicrously inserted his umbrella into a socket in the middle of the table, said something incomprehensible, turned up the collar of his white jacket and bolted into the interior. To telephone, Barnaby hoped, for a taxi.

The Piazza Colonna was rain-possessed. A huge weight of water flooded the street and pavements and spurted off the roofs of cars as if another multiple Roman fountain had been born. Motorists stared through blurred glass and past jigging windscreen wipers at the world outside. Except for isolated, scurrying wayfarers the pavements were emptied. Barnaby Grant, huddled, alone and ridiculous under his orange and blue umbrella, staunched his bloody nose. He attracted a certain incredulous attention. The waiter had disappeared and his comrades had got up among themselves one of those inscrutable Italian conversations that appear to be quarrels but very often end in backslaps and roars of laughter. Barnaby never could form the slightest notion of how long he had sat under the umbrella before he made his hideous discovery, before his left arm dangled from his shoulder and his left hand encountered — nothing.

As if it had a separate entity the hand explored, discovered only the leg of his chair, widened its search and found — nothing.

He remembered afterwards that he had been afraid to get into touch with his hand, to duck his head and look down and find a puddle of water, the iron foot of his chair-leg and again — nothing.

The experience that followed could, he afterwards supposed, be compared to the popular belief about drowning, in that an impossible flood of thoughts crowded his brain. He thought, for instance, of how long it had taken him to write his book, of his knowledge that undoubtedly it was the best thing he had done, perhaps would ever do.