He also knew that I liked a good time but paid my own way.

"I'm free," I said. "The only obligation I recognize is the one you owe a son or a daughter. And unfortunately I have no children."

"But you could be my daughter... or does that make me too old?"

"It's me that's too old."

Finally he opened up and smiled with those lively gray eyes. Without so much as moving his mouth in a smile, he filled with high spirits, looked me over appreciatively. I recognized this, too. He wasn't the kind to run after dolls.

"You know everything about this hotel," I said. "Tell me about yesterday's scandal. Do you know the girl?"

He gave me another long look and shook his head.

"I know the father," he said. "A hard man. Strong-willed. A sort of buffalo. He motorcycles and goes around his factory in overalls."

"I saw her mother."

"I don't know the mother. Good people. But the daughter is crazy."

"Crazy crazy?"

Morelli darkened. "When they try once, they try again."

"What do people say?"

"I don't know," he said. "I don't listen to such talk. It's like wartime conversation. Anything may be true. It might be a man, a revulsion, a whim. But there's only one real reason."

He tapped his forehead with a finger. He smiled again with his eyes. He held his hand on the oranges and said: "I've always seen you eating fruit, Clelia. That's real youth. Leave flowers to the Romans."

That bald character of the story muttered something to the waiter, threw down his napkin, and left, fat and solemn. He bowed to us. I laughed right at him; Morelli, expressionless, waved.

"Man is the only animal," he said, "who labors to dress himself."

When the coffee came, he still hadn't asked me what I was doing in Turin. Probably he knew already and there was no need to tell him. But neither did he ask me how long I was staying. I like this in people.