'How long has it taken you to do that much?' I asked.

She waited a minute, glanced at her bobbin.

'This much? I don't know. A day or two.'

'But you do it quickly.'

She looked at me, as if suspiciously and derisively. Then, quite
suddenly, she started forward and went across the terrace to the great
blue-and-white checked cloth that was drying on the wall. I hesitated.
She had cut off her consciousness from me. So I turned and ran away,
taking the steps two at a time, to get away from her. In a moment I was
between the walls, climbing upwards, hidden.

The schoolmistress had told me I should find snowdrops behind San
Tommaso. If she had not asserted such confident knowledge I should have
doubted her translation of _perce-neige_. She meant Christmas roses all
the while.

However, I went looking for snowdrops. The walls broke down suddenly,
and I was out in a grassy olive orchard, following a track beside pieces
of fallen overgrown masonry. So I came to skirt the brink of a steep
little gorge, at the bottom of which a stream was rushing down its steep
slant to the lake. Here I stood to look for my snowdrops. The grassy,
rocky bank went down steep from my feet. I heard water tittle-tattling
away in deep shadow below. There were pale flecks in the dimness, but
these, I knew, were primroses. So I scrambled down.