But it hadn't always been true. She had started life differently. Traces of vulnerability were still there, al-though perhaps not for long. Something had brought her to the point where life would harden her quickly.

Then a strange feeling came over him, as though the very air had moved, and the ground beneath him had trembled. He blinked, shaking his head, and the feeling vanished. Quickly he moved away.

'What's the matter?' Piero asked, handing him a cup of coffee.

'Nothing. It's just that for a moment I felt I'd seen her before. But where-?' He sighed. 'I must be imagining it.'

He drank his coffee and turned to go. At the door he stopped and handed Piero some money.

'Look after her,' he said quietly.

When Vincenzo had gone Piero wrapped himself in a blanket and lay down on the other sofa. After a while he slept.

Doors clanged again and again. It was a dreadful, hollow sound, and it soon became agonising.

She flung herself against one of those iron doors, pounding and shrieking that she should not be here. But there was no response, no help. Only stony, cold indifference.

There were bars at the windows. She pulled herself up to them, looking through at the world from which she was shut out.

She could see a wedding. It did not seem strange to find such a scene in this dreary place, for she knew instinctively that they were connected.

There was the groom, young and handsome, smiling on his day of triumph. Was there something about his smile that wasn't quite right, as though he was far from being the man his bride thought?

She knew nothing of that. The poor little fool thought he loved her. She was young, innocent, and stupid.

Here she came, glowing with love triumphant. Julia gripped the bars in horror as that naive girl threw back her veil, revealing the face beneath-

Her own face.