Arturo was one of the early employees of the gas company. He earned a lot. It was he who gave Elvira the initial sum necessary to set up in business. He came to the shop, content, a large man, shaking his head and his bamboo stick. She was sewing, sitting with her legs apart, and exchanged slow words in dialect with her workers, savouring each one. Every so often, lost in ecstasy, she sang a bit from La Traviata: ‘Tonight I’ll come to you, kisses’: he showed up at the shop casually, opening the door slightly, and letting in a very faint smell of the elegant officers who had passed at that moment. They were returning from eating sweets at Celestina’s pastry shop. Arturo disappeared, swallowed up by the seven-o’clock crowd, the hour when it’s whispered how Signora Altani is having an affair with the captain of the cavalry. Finish work early and then close up, and what a delightful evening! ‘Tonight I’ll come to you, kisses, with lots of nice cream puffs, all for you.’ She had to go to Celestina to buy the pastries, to the Brasile for coffee, to the Toscana for a bottle of sparkling white wine, and to the cigar store for the minghetti. Then run home to change, put on her perfume. And every pleasure passed under the domed lampshade, with its encircling fringe of multi-coloured beads. Around two, he got up from the bed. Either he had to get the train for some little matter he had to attend to, or he wanted to return to his house, because, he said, when one stays with one’s lover too much, people find something to criticize; he left her alone to enjoy the warmth of the sheets and her sated pleasure. It was another hour before she’d go to sleep, letting herself be rocked by the fantasy that always ended by transporting her back to his arms. Then she fell asleep, and she slept until a beautiful feathered hat called her back to reality. ‘Oh! Elvira, oh! Pretty Elvira,’ the neighbourhood boys sang. She went to the shop in the morning, and her strong, resolute step echoed on the pavement. That young master who was still sleeping up there, had he wanted to listen, would have understood with anguish and delight whose legs they were. But she offered the young masters nothing, she didn’t even give them a look. They could linger for hours in front of the shop window, because she would never get upset over them. What a pleasure, however, to let the sound of her own steps be heard! What strength, what line, what torment (as Arturo said), those legs! And she pounded the pavement even harder, going along proudly and saying something obscene to herself in dialect.