``Sam, no one around here wears such heavy soles. Can't you get another pair?''

``Maybe I could,'' he said, surprised that she could turn from herself and notice anything about him. ``I'll get an elegant pair of thin soled Italian shoes tomorrow, Carla.''

``And I don't know why you want to go on wearing that outfit,'' she said, making a face.

``What's the matter with it?'' He had put on the gray jacket and the dark gray slacks and the fawn colored shirt he had worn that first night in Rome when he had encountered her on the street.

``Oh, Sam. You look like a tweedy Englishman. Can't you wear something else and look a little more as though you belonged?''

``I don't mind at all,'' he said, delighted with her attention. Changing his clothes, he put on his dark-blue flannel suit, and laid away the gray jacket with the feeling that he might be putting it aside for good. But it was a hopeful sign, he told himself. She no longer wanted anything about him to remind her of the circumstances of their meeting that first night in Parioli.

That day they loafed around, just getting the feel of the city. They looked at the ruins of the old Roman wall on the lower Via Veneto, then they went to the Farnese Gardens. She had some amusing scandal about the Farneses in the old days. Then they took a taxi to Trastevere. ``There's a church you should see,'' she said. And when they stood by the fountain in the piazza looking at Santa Maria he had to keep a straight face, not letting on he had been there with Alberto. He let her tell him all about the church. Then they had dinner. All evening she was eloquent and pleased with herself. When they got home at midnight she was tired out. And in the morning when he woke up at ten the church bells were ringing.