II + 

Teresa looked up from her knitting one evening, and her eyes rested long on her grandson. + 

“Gian-Luca, come here.” + 

He slid off his chair and went to her, shy but adoring. The light from the lamp lay across her long hands and fell on one side of her hair. It fell on Gian-Luca and illumined him also⁠—a thin little boy in a black overall with a large smear of jam down the front. + 

“You have spilt your jam, Gian-Luca,” said Teresa promptly, but her eyes were not on the stain; then she did a very unexpected thing, she suddenly touched his hair. For a moment her hand lingered on his head, feeling the ashen-fair mop, feeling as one who is blind might feel, seeking for sight through the fingers. “This has nothing to do with us,” she said slowly. + 

Fabio put down his paper and frowned: “You mean?” + 

She was silent for a moment, pointing. Then: “This hair has nothing to do with us,” she repeated in her flat, even voice. + 

Fabio’s frown deepened. “What of it?” he muttered. “What can it matter, the color of his hair?” + 

But Teresa had turned the child’s face to the light and was staring down into his eyes. + 

Gian-Luca’s eyes, neither grey, blue nor hazel, were a curious compound of all three. They were limpid, too, like the cool, little lakes that are found high up in mountains. His were the eyes of Northern Italy⁠—the eyes that the vast barbarian hordes, sweeping over the vine-clad fruitful valleys, had bequeathed to the full-breasted, fruitful women⁠—the eyes that they would see in their sons. + 

“Nor have we such eyes in our stock,” said Teresa, and she pushed Gian-Luca away. + 

He stood and surveyed her gravely, reproachfully, out of those alien eyes. + 

“It is bedtime,” she told him. “Little boys must go to bed.” + 

“Si, si,” agreed Fabio anxiously. “They must.” + 

Gian-Luca went up and kissed Teresa on both cheeks; every evening he kissed her like this, on both cheeks, as family custom demanded. Then he turned and kissed Fabio also on both cheeks; Fabio was very prickly to kiss, for he shaved only twice a week. + 

“I will come and turn out the gas,” Teresa told him, “and do not take too long undressing yourself, and do not eat the orange Nonno gave you until tomorrow, it would make your stomach ache.” + 

Gian-Luca nodded and went towards the door, but in looking back he felt anxious and perturbed to see that Nonna had dropped her knitting and was staring blankly at the wall. + 