the moment, half-filled a tumbler
with wine and passed it to me. He was sitting across the table from me.
I declined. His face grew stern, and he insistently proffered the wine.
And then terror descended upon me--a terror which I must explain.

My mother had theories. First, she steadfastly maintained that brunettes
and all the tribe of dark-eyed humans were deceitful. Needless to say,
my mother was a blonde. Next, she was convinced that the dark-eyed Latin
races were profoundly sensitive, profoundly treacherous, and profoundly
murderous. Again and again, drinking in the strangeness and the
fearsomeness of the world from her lips, I had heard her state that if
one offended an Italian, no matter how slightly and unintentionally, he
was certain to retaliate by stabbing one in the back. That was her
particular phrase--"stab you in the back."

Now, although I had been eager to see Black Matt kill Tom Morrisey that
morning, I did not care to furnish to the dancers the spectacle of a
knife sticking in my back. I had not yet learned to distinguish between
facts and theories. My faith was implicit in my mother's exposition of
the Italian character. Besides, I had some glimmering inkling of the
sacredness of hospitality. Here was a treacherous, sensitive, murderous
Italian, offering me hospitality. I had been taught to believe that if I
offended him he would strike at me with a knife precisely as a horse
kicked out when one got too close to its heels and worried it. Then,
too, this Italian, Peter, had those terrible black eyes I had heard my
mother talk about. They were eyes different from the eyes I knew, from
the blues and greys and hazels of my own family, from the pale and genial
blues of the Irish. Perhaps Peter had had a few drinks. At any rate,
his eyes were brilliantly black and sparkling with devilry. They were
the mysterious, the unknown, and who was I, a seven-year-old, to analyse
them and know their prankishness? In them I visioned sudden death, and I
declined the wine half-heartedly. The expression in his eyes changed.
They grew stern and imperious as he shoved the tumbler of wine closer.

What could I do? I have faced real death since in my life, but never have
I known the fear of death as I knew it then. I put the glass to my lips,
and Peter's eyes relented. I knew he would not kill me just then. That
was a relief. But the wine was not. It was cheap, new wine, bitter and
sour, made of the