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Torn between distrust and pride, Ines dried her eyes with the back of her hand. "This Lanciani's an electrician," she said proudly: and took to sketching his likeness. Her voice, after pauses of fear and suspicion and admissions filled with belated caution, became animated to the point of a heedless gaiety, almost joy. She resented Ingravallo's choice of words. "If you want to know about this mug," she resumed, turning to Fumi as to the more benign of her two principal inquisitors, "there's more than one boy who'd be glad to have it, that mug; believe me, sir, chief, that you wouldn't mind having it yourself, a face like that." "Sure, sure." "A boy this tall": and she made the usual gesture, raising and extending horizontally her hand. She bent her head to one side, the better to glance at her palm, to evaluate, from below, the accuracy of that indication of height. "A handsome boy. Yes, he's handsome. So what? Is that against the law? He's smart, too. Yes, blond. It's not his fault if his Mamma made him a blond. Eh? Was she supposed to make him dark, when she felt like making him blond?" In her bag she even had his picture. Paolillo went straight off to the storeroom to dig out, from those rags, that miserable little purse: the identification card of the poor girl, which she had refused to the patrol when she was picked up, was already on Doctor Fumi's desk and under the light, open, crumpled. Paolillo returned, with the vagabond's purse and, in his other hand, the photograph of a young man painfully autographed crosswise with a scrawled signature: "Lumiai Dio . . ." he spelled out, as he walked, and he was about to hold it out. "Hand it over." Doctor Fumi tore it from his hand. "Lunci-a-ci Di-o . . . God only knows what he's written here. Diomede!" he exclaimed, victorious. A character! A face of the kind that the bimonthly "The Defense of the Race,"{42} fifteen years later, would have published as an example of splendid Aryanism: the Aryanism of the Latin and Sabellian peoples. As an exact copy, yes. He was blond, certainly: the photo asserted that: a virile face, a clump of hair. The mouth, a straight line. Above the life of the cheeks and the neck two steady, mocking eyes: which promised the best, to girls, to maidservants, and the worst to their dejarred savings. A bold sort, made to be surrounded and fought over, followed and overtaken, and then given presents more or less by all the girls, according to the possibilities of each. A type to represent Latium and its handsomeness at the Foro Italico.{43}

That photo, Ines explained, had cost her an incredible number of slaps: because he, one day, had wanted it back. Yes, he wanted it back at all costs. It was night, almost. He had turned mean, as she refused: he seemed out of his mind. He had yelled in her face, called her one thing and another, he even had the heart to slap her around: and, as if that weren't enough, threats. They were alone, between two walls, under a broken street light on the Clivo de' Publicii at Rocca Savella, where the knights are{44}: it was growing dark. But she had taken the slaps, not batting an eye. She had held fast. At least that memento of him! of all the love they had felt for each other! and she loved him still, for her part: even if now . . . they forced her to turn informer. "But there's nothing to inform!" she yelled. "So he gave me a couple of slaps, what of it? That's our business: you can't put him in jail for that."

"A couple of slaps!" and Doctor Fumi, shaking his head, looked at her. "Before, you told us another story: but it doesn't matter!" and he drew his head down between his shoulders. He was about to tell her again that she had nothing to fear: they only wanted to question him, not to arrest him, still less, to lock him up. "Well, anyway I'm sure you'll never make it: you won't find him, not him." She spoke with her head bowed, pensive. "And besides, if you do find him, I'll be glad. That'll be the end of things between him