The house stood at one end of the crescent sweep of thickly-daisied lawn, framed by two immense cedars. At the other end of the dense sward, a semi-circle of hedgerows was punctuated by a group of solemn busts intervalled on plinths. Roman noses and drapery dressed their marbled forms, verdigrised by years of damp English summers, as they gazed impassively on the lengthening vista.

It was a steamy day. A thunderstorm had been threatening during most of the afternoon and in the distant fringes of the sky, dark clouds presaged its arrival. Far-off echoes of rumbles were heard. However, not a drop of rain had yet fallen and the day had become even closer in its unfulfilled warning.

James had been here before. A long time before. As a child an aunt had given him a book on Palladian villas and he had been enthralled to find that there had been so many in this area, a once luscious and pastoral river valley, now largely swallowed up by the ravenous housing and arterial roads of a bloated city. Taking to his bicycle he had come to these sylvan glades, gazed upon the Corinthian columns which acted as the villa’s front porch, wandered through the cool cellars, once stacked with wine barrels, and shyly entered into the richly decorated apartments above, arranged like so many jewels around the solemn neck of the great octagon where he had imagined polished conversations on the classical poets and virtues taking place among a coterie of cognoscenti and dilettanti.

Following a line of drooping young poplars James walked dreamily towards the Villa’s great portico. The afternoon weighed heavy and sultry and the air thickened with immobility. Turning a corner, he suddenly chanced upon a small summerhouse on his left, almost hidden by a dark shrubbery.

Clearly built to resemble a Hellenistic temple, the honeyed stones of the summerhouse glowed in the late afternoon sun. Above its mignon pediment the figure of Psyche awakening Cupid was carved in. The door of the summerhouse was open.

Strange, thought James, in view of the endemic vandalism these garden ornaments were now prone to in the city’s parks. Inside the little shrine, four dark, windowless cool stone-laid walls formed a gloom in which James could only after some seconds of readjustment discern a marble table positioned in the centre of the room.

Oriental griffins grew out of each of its four legs, festoons of carved fruit hung before its front and a kaleidoscope of semi-precious rocks set in a weird geometry composed the table’s top.

James, however, soon turned from examining more deeply the various beauties of this item of garden furniture for his eyes were drawn to a piece of paper placed aslant on the tabletop. At first, he took the paper for some piece of litter, waste paper thrown by an energetic wind onto the table. Then seeing some writing on it, he imagined it to have been absent-mindedly left by a previous visitor to this spot.

James could not, at first read what was written on the paper, which felt thick and coarse to the touch as if it had been hand-made. As his eyes gradually accustomed themselves to the light, he began to read the words:

“I have endured such unendurable hours in the expectation of seeing you again my love after so, so many years. Yet, I knew you would come back again to this place so dear to me and where I have often thought of our night of great happiness together. Do not presume too much on my actions since we last enjoyed each other. Suffice it to say my life since then has only induced in me the certainty that we are made for each other and that we can only be completely happy in each other’s arms. Your ever constant S.”

James was perplexed. He re-read the note but this did not take away his perplexing. One part of him felt as if he were intruding into another’s private conversation in which he had no part. Yet another, deeper part of him felt that he had known these moments of ecstasy in these places before and that he had known, kissed, embraced and loved the hand that had written these lines. It came into his mind that he had, indeed, known someone called S all those years ago, which had meant so much to him.

He was half-in-doubt whether to leave the note on its place on the table and to walk out into the diminishing but still strong sunlight when he felt a silk-like caress on his hand and a warm feminine perfume caressed his entire being. He turned around to see her. Her face, unmistakably hers, in its lineaments of purest desire, in its freshness of attraction, its grace and fineness of feeling.

Yes, her whom he had forgotten in his active life all these years but whose presentiments had always been with him in his half-awaking subconscious, whose presence had always haunted him from the corner of his eye to the end of his finger-tips.

However, how could she have known that he would be here at his moment? Did anything lead him to come here in the first place? These thoughts were brushed aside as, taking hand in hand, they walked together towards the portico of the great house while around them vieille and flute players gathered for the fete champetre before the villa’s garnered staircase serenaded ladies in long silk dresses and gentlemen dressed as Harlequins and Pulcinellas.

As the ladies curtsied and the gentlemen bowed James and Sarah realised they had recaptured time, their time. Turning their lips towards each other, they knew they were home at last.

“Action,” cried the director while the mirrored lights ignited in defiance of the congregating dusk.