Visconti must be aging, I fear, for he has taken to repeating himself. He has told me often before that his daughter Gina is the apple of his eye, but during these somewhat listless days in the office in which "extras" figure largely and strategy is the one indoor game, he has been going into more detail. I dined at his house last night and to-day he asked me again to dine on Saturday. I dislike refusing him and I like lying less. But I declined on the plea of an engagement. "I always forget," he returned with a laugh, "that a young man is not _un’ burbero_ of a widower like me—that a young man, in short, has engagements." I made some sort of deprecating noise. He talks as though I were twenty-two, and I like him for it. "But you see, _amico mio_," he went on explaining, "it is like this: Gina, the _carissima bambina mia_, is the apple of my eye. And she must be—what do you call it—amused—amused, made gay, bright—you see?" I signified my clairvoyance. "She is nineteen—a _fanciulla_ of nineteen, she must have much—eh—amusement, not so?" 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. "The _fanciulla_," he went on, thoughtfully vehement. "She is all I possess—all in the world. At my death she shall possess everything I have. She has it now! For whom then do I work if not for Gina? As for me, I could go back to Italy—maybe. I have enough. But Gina—she is American girl—ah!" and he kissed his finger tips with unction. "She is fine American girl!" Having said that, he veered into talk about Belgium, Von Kluck and general strategy. But why should he so persistently sing the praises and prospects of his daughter to me, a clerk in his office?