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tea. It was so relaxing and the food so simple and wholesome that she found her appetite greater than she realized. Conversation flowed freely, and Amanda found herself quickly at ease with the two women.
    â€œSister Gretchen has told me a little of your story,” said the older of the two, whom Amanda had by now begun to assume was in charge of this place, whatever it was. “She said you were trying to get out of Italy so that you might return to England.”
    Amanda nodded as she set down her cup of tea.
    â€œI am embarrassed to say,” she replied, “that I got myself involved with some people I shouldn’t have. They called themselves the Fountain of Light, but it took me some time to realize that light was the last word I would use to describe their influence on me.”
    â€œThere are many who use words such as light and truth,” remarked Sister Hope thoughtfully, “but not nearly so many who live by their principles.”
    â€œI came to the Continent this past spring,” Amanda went on, “having no idea what was going to happen. I thought I was just going on holiday, accompanying an older lady as her companion. As it turned out, I did not go back to England with her as I had planned. I really wasn’t thinking very clearly, because these people, I learned only recently, turned out to be a spy network. Unfortunately, by then—”
    Amanda stopped abruptly and glanced away. She wasn’t ready to go so far with personal honesty and self-exposure yet as to tell them about Ramsay. She didn’t want to talk about him. She didn’t even want to think about him.
    â€œLet me just say,” she continued after taking a deep breath, “that when I finally woke up to what I had allowed myself to become involved in, Europe was at war and I was in Austria. I realized I was in danger and suddenly was very afraid. So I looked for an opportunity, and when it came I ran away from the house where these people had their headquarters, or so I assume, and took the first train out of Vienna that wasn’t going to Germany.”
    Amanda fell silent. It seemed like such a long time had passed. In fact, she had only escaped from the house on Ebendorfer Strasse three days ago.
    â€œWhere did you go?” asked Sister Hope after a moment. “Vienna is some distance from Milan.”
    â€œTrieste,” replied Amanda. “From there I managed to get into Italy. That’s also where I realized I had been followed, and I was terrified all over again. I don’t know what I would have done if Gretchen hadn’t befriended me,” she added, glancing toward her savior of the day before with an uneasy smile.
    Why was she being so talkative all of a sudden? Amanda wondered to herself. And with almost total strangers? Yet there was such a difference here from the house in Vienna. She had felt it immediately last night, though they had arrived after dark. Everything about the place seemed to exude openness and acceptance.
    And, strange to say, light .
    The house on Ebendorfer Strasse, where they talked about light, was so filled with darkness. Even as she thought back to Vienna now, the house itself, with its long interior corridors and pulled drapes and hushed conversations and unfriendly looks, was chilly and foreboding.
    The moment the sun came up this morning, blazing into her window off the snowy mountains, she knew she had come to a place of light indeed.
    She hadn’t been able to define it back then. But the moment she and Mrs. Thorndike had arrived in Vienna she felt like a stranger in the midst of strangers. It was a peculiar, dark, ominous place. Ramsay’s mother had told her to think of it as her home. How couldshe have been so foolish and blind? What in the world had she been thinking? Or had she been thinking at all! After being gone from Ebendorfer Strasse only a few days, the whole bleak experience was already beginning to fade into a fuzzy blur