Then there was a silence, and I was happy in the echo of my name. “What’s happening, Valeria?” he asked, without looking at me, still staring at that initial. I said, “I don’t know,” and looked down. He continued, “Shall we be frank? May I speak?” I would have liked to say no, to put on my coat and go, instead I nodded. “I was afraid,” he confessed. I looked up again, surprised, because I had always thought of him as a strong man. “It began about two months ago, when you told me—you remember?—that your family’s financial situation had improved. I asked you, half in jest, if you would abandon me. You answered seriously, instead, as if you had already reflected on this possibility. You said, I remember it well: ‘Not for now.’ ” Immediately I explained to him that I had said that without intending to, maybe instinctively, considering that, if there was no financial reason to work, at home they wouldn’t accept this, my personal activity; on the contrary … He interrupted me: “Yes, I understand. Besides, I myself didn’t give it any weight at the moment. It was later, that Saturday, when we were alone here in the office by chance. Suddenly, while we were working together, I felt an unknown sensation of sweetness and your words came to mind. From then on I began to be afraid, I imagined coming here every morning and not finding you. Maybe because the others—you saw Marcellini?—work only to get their salary and leave, they work with me the way they’d work with anyone. Or maybe because you know everything about the office, and know how much tenacity, how much effort … Or maybe that’s not why,” he added, lowering his voice. “In other words, I was afraid of being alone again, the way I was when I started. Worse, in fact, because today I no longer have that enthusiasm, that anxiety for achievement that sustained me then. I don’t believe in anything anymore, today. There: I understood that here, without you, I would be alone just as I am at home. First I thought it was a moment of weariness—every so often I like to feel sorry for myself … Instead, as the days passed, I understood better what my life would be without you, Valeria. An overwhelming boredom with work seized me, a boredom with life, in fact, a nausea. Do you understand?” I murmured, “Yes, I understand.” And then, after a pause, “It would be like that for me, too.”