The New Year's sun shone on the lifeless child; motionless she sat there with the matches in her lap, one bundle of them quite burnt out.

If the Signora admires it, I must give her a cutting to plant also in her garden; I am told the English have beautiful gardens that are green, and not burnt with the sun like ours.

And I am literally sitting, in a burnt-orange alcove designed to frame a giant plant pot, because this is the one nook of the pool where I can be up to my chin in the water and also not be in the sun.