It is your fault that I am going to confession badly prepared.”

A new hope awoke in Emilio’s breast. What a blessed thing religion was! He had banished it from his own home and deprived Amalia of its comfort, but now that he found it again at Angiolina’s side he welcomed it with indescribable joy. In face of an honest woman’s religion all those men on the wall seemed to him less formidable, and as he went away he kissed Angiolina’s hand respectfully, a homage which she accepted as a tribute to her virtue.

So that the only result of his visit was that he had found out the way to her house. He got into the habit of going there every morning to take her something nice to eat with her coffee. How much he enjoyed the hour he spent with her then. She had only just got out of bed, and he took her wonderful body in his arms and pressed it to him, still warm from sleep. He felt its warmth through her thin wrapper, and had the sense of immediate contact with her naked body. The spell of religion had vanished very quickly, for Angiolina’s was hardly of the quality to protect anyone who had to rely on that alone for her defense; but Emilio’s suspicions never returned to him with their former violence. When he was in that room he had no time to look about him.

Angiolina tried on another occasion to stimulate a religious feeling which had stood her in such good stead once before, but she was unsuccessful, and she soon began to make game of it in the most shameless way. When she had had enough of his kisses, she would push him away with the words: Ite missa est, thus sullying a mystic idea which Emilio in all seriousness had several times expressed at the moment of parting from her. She would ask a deo gratias when she had a small favor to ask of him, and cry mea maxima culpa when he became too exacting, or libera nos, domine, when he began saying something she did not want to hear.

Though he had never possessed her completely, his incomplete possession gave him perfect satisfaction, and if he tried to go farther it was really from lack of self-assurance, and because he was afraid of being an object of derision to all those men who looked down on him from the wall. She defended herself energetically. Her brothers would kill her, she said. Once, when he was more than usually aggressive, she burst into tears. He did not really love her, she said, if he wanted to make her unhappy. Then, pacified and happy, he gave up his offensive. She had not belonged to anyone and he could be certain of not being an object of ridicule.

But she solemnly promised to give herself to him if she could do it without getting herself into trouble or making difficulties for him. She talked about it as if it were the simplest thing in the world. One day she had an inspiration: they must find a third person on whom to put the burden of any complication that might arise from their relationship, and whom it would be great fun to deceive. He listened enraptured to her words, which he interpreted as a declaration of love for himself. There was small hope of finding a third person of the kind Angiolina imagined, but he felt now that he could rest assured of her feeling for him. She was in very truth all that he could have desired her to be, and she gave him her love without trying to bind him, without apparently endangering his independence.

It was true that his whole life was at the moment taken up by his love; he could think of nothing else; he could not work; he could not even attend satisfactorily to his office duties. But so much the better. His life had taken on a new aspect for a short while, and afterwards he would find it almost a distraction to return to his former untroubled state. His love of images led him to see his life as a straight, uneventful road leading across a quiet valley; from the point at which he had first met Angiolina the road branched off, and led him through a varied landscape of trees, flowers, and hills. But only for a short while; after that it dropped to the valley, and became again the straight high road, easy and secure, but less tedious now because it was refreshed by memories of that enchanting, vivid interlude, full of color and perhaps too of fatigues.

One day she told him she was obliged to go and do some work at the house of some acquaintances of theirs, called Deluigi. Signora Deluigi was a kind woman; she had a daughter, who was a friend of Angiolina, and an old husband; there were no boys in the family. All the household were devoted to her, Angiolina said. “I like going there very much, for I have a much better time than in my own home.” Emilio could not say anything against it, and resigned himself to seeing her only in the evening, though even then less often than before, for she got back late from her work and it would not be worthwhile to come out again.

So he found himself again with some evenings free, which he could devote to his friend and his sister. He still attempted to deceive them—as indeed he deceived himself—about the importance of his adventure, and he even went so far as to try and make Balli believe that he was glad Angiolina was sometimes engaged in the evening, so that he was not obliged to keep her company every day.