The age difference between him and his mistress had never seemed an insurmountable obstacle to Jip until he met the young and pretty Rita. Until then, he had always appreciated the bourgeois comfort and good food offered by Mona, his twenty year old elder. But the dishes had not, now, the same flavor, nor the chairs, the same pleasure as before. Jip was in love. Rita was not less of this docile and dreamy boy whose only resources seemed to come from the piano lessons he gave right and left.