Vinca confessed: “I also remembered you vaguely during the day. If something serious happened to me, I would call you, as if to reproach you for the privilege of being still in there: protected from love, from war. From life.

She judged her life mainly when she thought of Silvia: with her squinting eyes, the black dress of her long periods of mourning. If Silvia lived in Milan, she would come to see her and ask: “Why are you doing this, Xenia?” And Xenia wouldn’t find the strength to joke, as she did with Vandina, “These honest women …” trying to brush the dust off,

The professor, seeing his wife, emerged from his tranquil detachment, took off his glasses, and went toward her: “Oh, thanks, Dora, you’re always thinking of me.” He had only to see her enter to light up; everything Silvia had done was dwarfed beside that cup of tea.

Marriage was a way of leaving; she had only to be patient for two more months. But the life that Andrea promised her was another prison. He at the store, she at home with the maid, the mother-in-law who would come to visit, bringing her knitting. Christmas and Easter in the Lanziani house with the tolling of the pendulum. After dinner, father and

Freedom. A great thing, freedom. She tried to convince herself that, these days, family and marriage don’t have much importance; she even tried to laugh at them. “The truth is that not many women have the courage to confess: I’d like to have a lover, yes, I’ll take one.” Vandina always said: “These respectable girls make me laugh! Papa and Mamma

At night now, all the windows on the façade facing the courtyard at the Grimaldi were lighted. After dinner the girls no longer gathered to talk: each shut herself in her own room, seriously preparing for exams or thesis. In the courtyard you could hear the monotonous flow of water in the fountain. Outside the thick gray walls it was summer.

Xenia had become more beautiful. Her body acquired slenderness in her new, stylish clothes; the greedy look that hardened her eyes had disappeared, or at least was more deeply hidden. Furnishing the house had been a pleasant occupation that had both revealed and refined her natural good taste. “Wouldn’t you like to do interior design?” people

“But I will never know how to enter his study dressed like that: enter on a wave of perfume, face powdered, carrying a cup of tea. She enters like a woman, while I work beside him like a comrade. He doesn’t even notice that he’s no longer alone when I enter: I’m with him, on the men’s side.” Silvia was surprised, listening to Signora Dora speak to

“It’s comfortable in this room.” “The rest of you, all you think about is leaving: so yours are like hotel rooms. You hesitate to unpack your suitcases, afraid of binding yourselves to these walls.”