“Many times.”

“Then she’s turned you down.”

“Each time… “ Importuna was about to say more. Instead, he crushed his stogy out.

“Then how do you expect me to get her to change her mind? You’ve been an American long enough to know that dutiful daughters and arranged marriages went out with bundling and the bustle.”

“You’ll find an argument, suocero. For instance, you might mention to her certain funds you took that didn’t belong to you? The hardness of the mattresses in Sing Sing and Danbury? The disgrace of your old family name? I leave the approach to you, amico. In view of your fate otherwise, I have confidence you won’t fail.”

“You talk like a damned soap opera, you know that?” the embezzler muttered; most of his mind was already occupied with tactics. “Look, Nino, it isn’t going to be that easy. Virginia has a mind of her own-”

“But she loves you,” Importuna said. “Though the good Jesus alone knows why.”

“And that’s another thing. There’s the religious difference-”

“She will convert to the Church. That’s to be understood.”

“Just like that? Suppose she simply won’t go along, Nino. There’s no guarantee even with the prison argument.”

“That’s your problem. Always remembering,” Importuna said, “that if you don’t deliver I charge you with grand larceny.”

The Havana went out. He took it out of his mouth, regarded it with regret, and set it down on Importuna’s ashtray. “How much time are you giving me?”

“Ah,” the swarthy man said briskly. “Today is August 9th. I’m allowing you one month to talk her into it. One month to the day. I want to marry Virginia on the 9th of September.”

“I see.” He was silent. Then some residue of decency made him say, “You know, Nino, rogue and peasant slave though I am, Virginia’s my little girl still, and to think of playing on her feelings for me to force her into the arms of a man three times her age-”