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A young couple from Boston travels among villas and galleries in Florence as their engagement and differing temperaments illuminate tensions between present pleasures and reverence for the past. The husband's scholarly enthusiasms and the wife's delight in contemporary life attract and perplex each other while a suggestive fascination, described as a spell, alters several characters' perceptions. A circle of friends and rivals, artistic ambitions, and social expectations complicate loyalties, prompting introspection about marriage, aesthetic longing, and personal choice amid evocative Italian landscapes.
A few missing quotation marks have been added.
Archaic and inconsistent spelling and hyphenation have been preserved.
On page 193 the original text is: “Because ‘beautiful paintings’ do not have husbands,” in the caption of the illustration the quote is: “do not possess husbands.” This has been preserved.