He regarded her with surprise.

'English?' he asked.

She made the effort. 'Si. Sono inglese.'

'There's no need for that,' he said in perfect English. 'I speak your language. Now you must have some food. My name is Piero, by the way.'

When she hesitated he said, 'Any name will do- Cynthia, Anastasia, Wilhemina, Julia-'

'Julia,' she said. It was as good a name as any.

In one corner stood a tall ceramic stove, white with gilt decoration. In the lower part was a pair of doors, which he opened and began to pile wood inside.

'The electricity is off,' he explained, 'so it's lucky that ' the old stove remains. This one has stood here nearly two hundred years, and it still works. The trouble is I'm out of paper to light it.'

'Here. I got a newspaper on the plane.'

He showed no surprise at someone who had managed to buy a plane ticket and then slept in the street. He simply struck a match and in a few moments they had the beginnings of a fire.

At last they considered each other.

She saw an old man, tall, very thin, with a shock of white hair. He wore an ancient overcoat, tied with string around the waist, and a threadbare woollen scarf wrapped around his throat. He seemed a mixture of scarecrow and clown. His face was almost cadaverous, making his bright blue eyes exceptionally vivid by contrast. Even more noticeable was his smile, brilliant as a beacon, which flashed on and off.

Piero saw a woman whose age he couldn't guess except to put her in the mid thirties. Perhaps older, perhaps younger.

She was tall, and her figure, dressed in serviceable jeans, sweater and jacket, was a little too slim to be ideal. Her long fair hair hung forward like a curtain, making it hard to see her properly. Perhaps she preferred it that way because she mostly let it hang. Just once she brushed it aside, revealing that suffering had left her with a weary, troubled face, large eyes, and an air of distrusting all the world.