A Rent In A Cloud

Two young Englishmen on continental travel form a casual companionship that frames a series of excursions, gallery visits, and witty confidences. Their easy camaraderie becomes complicated by encounters at a lakeside villa, where an elderly housekeeper and two sisters draw them into intimacies, sketches, and moral debates. Correspondence and old attachments prompt quarrels, jealousies, and heartfelt confessions, while news from afar forces abrupt departures and returns. The narrative alternates travel episodes, domestic scenes, and lovers’ disputes, moving toward revelations and a brief, storm-tinged finale that settles several separations and admissions.