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moment, then returned to us.
    “Ill-mannered people,” he said as he sat down and straightened his jacket with nervous gestures.
    “You shouldn’t have troubled,” said my mother, highly flattered. “They’re only rough boys.”
    But Gino was overwhelmed by this opportunity of parading his chivalry. “How could I have done otherwise?” he replied. “It would have been a different matter had I been with one of those — you, signora , will understand what I mean — quite a different matter, altogether.… But since I happened to be with two ladies, in a public place, in a restaurant — anyway he realized I was serious, and you see how he shut up.”
    Mother was completely won over by this incident. Also, because Gino had made her drink and she found the wine as intoxicating as the flattery. But as so often happens to those who have drunk too much, in spite of her apparent surrender to Gino’s charm, she continued to harbor ill feelings about our engagement. And she seized the first opportunity of making it plain to him that, in spite of everything, she had not forgotten.
    Her opportunity came during a conversation about my occupation as a model. I no longer remember how it was that I came to speak about a new artist for whom I had been posing that morning.
    “I may be stupid, I may be old-fashioned, anything you like, but I really can’t swallow the fact that Adriana takes off all her clothes in front of these artists every day.” interrupted Gino.
    “Why not?” asked Mother in a thick voice that warned me, knowing her as I did, of the storm that was brewing.
    “Because, in a word, it isn’t moral.”
    I shall not give my mother’s reply in its entirety, because it was sprinkled with the oaths and coarse expressions she always used when she had drunk too much or was overcome with anger. But even when I’ve toned it down, her speech reflects her ideas and feelings about the matter.
    “Ah, so it isn’t moral, isn’t it?” she began to shout at the top of her voice, so that all the people at the other tables stopped eating and turned toward us. “Not moral — what is moral, I’d like to know? Perhaps it’s moral to work your fingers to the bone all day, wash up, sew, cook, iron, sweep, scrub floors, and then have your husband turn up in the evening so dead tired that as soon as his meal is done he goes to bed, turns his back on you, and sleeps? That’s what you call moral, is it? It’s moral to sacrifice yourself, never have time to breathe, to grow old and ugly, then croak? Do you want to know what I think? It’s that you only live once, and when you’re dead, you’re dead, and you and all your morality can go to the devil. Adriana’s perfectly right to show herself naked if people will pay her for doing it, and she’d do even better if —” A string of obscenities followed that made me writhe with shame because she shouted them all in the same piercing voice as the rest. “And if she were to do these things I wouldn’t lift a finger to prevent her — not only that, but I’d help her to it — yes, I would — as long as they paid her, of course,” she added, as if struck by an afterthought.
    “I’m sure you wouldn’t really be able to bring yourself to do it,” said Gino, without appearing at all ruffled.
    “Wouldn’t I? That’s what you say! What the devil do you think? Do you think I’m glad Adriana’s engaged to a deadbeat like you, a chauffeur? Wouldn’t I have been a thousand times happier if she had gone on the streets? Do you think I like the idea that Adriana, with all her beauty that could earn her thousands, is going to be your servant for the rest of her life? You’re wrong, utterly wrong.”
    She continued to shout and with everyone turning their attention on us, I felt dreadfully ashamed. But Gino was not at all disconcerted. He seized a moment when Mother, panting and exhausted, was obliged to stop for lack of breath, to pick up thewine bottle and fill her