"My child," I said, "what do you mean to do?"

She shrugged her thin shoulders. "It is misery at home. Here, in
Pistoja, there is not apparent misery, nor need there be any. Signer
Francesco," she said, "look at me. I am sixteen years old, a
marriageable girl, not ill-looking, not ill-made, starving, without a
lover or the portion to buy one. What is to be done with me? What is to
be the end of me? It seems that the world has to answer me that
question. Am I to stop at Condoglia, and gnaw my knuckles, and work to
the bone for another's benefit, and kennel with dogs and chicken? Why,
my going will benefit them. The chicken will have more to eat. Or say
that I do stop there--what then? Having nothing, needing much, I marry a
man of my own nation, who has even less than nothing, and needs more
than I do. In fact, he needs me only that I may fend for him. And then?
And then, Don Francesco? More knuckles to be gnawed, more starving
mouths to gnaw them, more dogs, more chicken to jostle for the pease-
straw which I and my man and the children we choose to beget shall
huddle on. Life in Condoglia! Ah, thank you for nothing, Don Francesco,
if this is what you have bought for me with your fine gold piece."

I was dismayed. I was dumb at such a callous summing-up of my honest
action. All I could stammer out was some feeble, trite protest against a
disordered life, which sounded insincere, but certainly was not that.
When I urged her in the name of religion to go home, she opened her eyes
with an expression of scornful incredulity. She was fully six years
younger than me, and yet strangely my senior. Without being told so, I
had the intuition that to appeal to her on the part of religion was to
invite failure.