He is fond of the Socratic method and I humored him.
"But doesn't she go to parties—has she no girl friends?"
"Ah, sicurissimo, sicurissimo. But a girl—nineteen years—it is young men in the house that amuse her, eh?" And he slapped me on the back and roared with laughter of a boisterous heartiness that somewhat, as novelists say, "took me aback."
I have not exactly been seeing myself in the guise of a youth cut out to amuse Gina Visconti.
"How of Sunday?" he asked, with a sudden quizzical soberness. "Sunday you can come?"
I regretted his insistence, but somewhat laboredly I explained that I am weakly addicted to books; and that Sunday was the single day when I could sit among my books and—
"Ah, but of course!" gravely. He understood full well that I was a student, a scholar, who outside office hours pursued a higher life, and so forth.
I felt mawkish and mean but I clung to my Sunday.
"Monday, then—shall we call it Monday?" he pressed.
I could not be so churlish as to decline further. But I hardly knew why a sense of uneasiness stole into my bosom after his subsequent words.