Where Angels Fear to Tread · Chapter 6 (4/4)

Miss Abbott, too, had a wonderful evening, nor did she ever remember such stars or such a sky. Her head, too, was full of music, and that night when she opened the window her room was filled with warm, sweet air. She was bathed in beauty within and without; she could not go to bed for happiness. Had she ever been so happy before? Yes, once before, and here, a night in March, the night Gino and Lilia had told her of their love⁠—the night whose evil she had come now to undo.

She gave a sudden cry of shame. “This time⁠—the same place⁠—the same thing”⁠—and she began to beat down her happiness, knowing it to be sinful. She was here to fight against this place, to rescue a little soul⁠—who was innocent as yet. She was here to champion morality and purity, and the holy life of an English home. In the spring she had sinned through ignorance; she was not ignorant now. “Help me!” she cried, and shut the window as if there was magic in the encircling air. But the tunes would not go out of her head, and all night long she was troubled by torrents of music, and by applause and laughter, and angry young men who shouted the distich out of Baedeker:⁠—

Poggibonizzi, fatti in là

Che Monteriano si fa città!

Poggibonsi was revealed to her as they sang⁠—a joyless, straggling place, full of people who pretended. When she woke up she knew that it had been Sawston.