"I have never told it to anybody yet; but I'll tell you if  you care to
hear."
     She  silently  laid  down  her knitting.  To  her  there was  something
grievously pathetic  in  this  hard,  secret, unlovable  creature,  suddenly
flinging his personal confidence  at the feet of a woman whom he barely knew
and whom he apparently disliked.
     A long silence followed, and she looked up. He was leaning his left arm
on the  little table  beside him,  and shading  his eyes  with the mutilated
hand, and she  noticed the nervous tension of the fingers and the  throbbing
of the scar on the wrist. She came up to him and called him  softly by name.
He started violently and raised his head.
     "I f-forgot," he stammered apologetically. "I was g-going to t-tell you
about----"
     "About the--accident or whatever it was  that caused your lameness. But
if it worries you----"
     "The accident? Oh, the  smashing! Yes; only it wasn't an  accident,  it
was a poker." She stared at him in blank amazement. He pushed back  his hair
with a hand that shook perceptibly, and looked up at her, smiling.
     "Won't you sit  down?  Bring your chair  close, please. I'm so  sorry I
can't get it for you.  R-really,  now I come to  think of it, the case would
have  been  a p-perfect  t-treasure-trove for Riccardo  if he had  had me to
treat;  he  has  the  true surgeon's  love for broken  bones, and I  believe
everything in me that was breakable was  broken on  that occasion--except my
neck."
     "And  your  courage," she put in softly. "But  perhaps  you count  that
among your unbreakable possessions."
     He shook his  head. "No," he said; "my courage has been mended up after
a  fashion, with the  rest  of  me; but  it was fairly broken  then,  like a
smashed tea-cup; that's the  horrible  part  of it. Ah---- Yes; well, I  was
telling you about the poker.
     "It was--let me see--nearly thirteen  years  ago, in Lima.  I told  you
Peru was  a  delightful country to live  in; but  it's not quite so nice for
people  that  happen to be at low water,  as  I was. I had  been down in the
Argentine, and then in Chili, tramping the country and starving, mostly; and
had come up from Valparaiso as odd-man on a  cattle-boat. I couldn't get any
work in Lima itself, so I went  down to  the  docks,--they're at Callao, you
know,--to try  there. Well of course  in  all those shipping-ports there are
low quarters where the sea-faring  people congregate; and after some  time I
got taken on as servant in one of the gambling hells there. I had to do  the
cooking and  billiard-marking,  and fetch  drink for the sailors  and  their
women, and all that sort of thing. Not very pleasant work;  still I was glad
to get it; there was at least food and the sight of human faces and sound of
human tongues--of a  kind.  You  may  think that was no advantage; but I had
just  been  down with yellow fever, alone  in the  outhouse  of  a  wretched
half-caste shanty, and the thing had given me the horrors. Well, one night I
was told to put out a tipsy  Lascar who was making himself obnoxious; he had
come ashore and lost all his money and was in a  bad temper. Of course I had
to obey if I didn't want to lose my place and starve; but  the man was twice
as  strong as I--I was not  twenty-one and as weak as a cat after the fever.
Besides, he had the poker."
     He paused a moment, glancing furtively at her; then went on:
     "Apparently he intended to  put an end to me altogether; but somehow he
managed to scamp his work--Lascars always do if they have a chance; and left
just enough of me not smashed to go on living with."
     "Yes,  but the  other people, could they not interfere?  Were  they all
afraid of one Lascar?"
     He looked up and burst out laughing.
     "THE OTHER PEOPLE? The gamblers and  the people of the  house? Why, you
don't understand! They were negroes and Chinese and Heaven knows what; and I
was  their servant--THEIR PROPERTY. They stood round and enjoyed the fun, of
course. That sort of thing counts for a good joke out there. So it is if you
don't happen to be the subject practised on."
     She shuddered.
     "Then what was the end of it?"
     "That I can't tell you much about; a man doesn't  remember the next few
days after a thing of that kind, as a rule.  But there was a ship's  surgeon
near, and it  seems that when they found I was not dead, somebody called him
in. He patched me up after a fashion--Riccardo seems to  think it was rather
badly done, but that may be professional jealousy. Anyhow, when I came to my
senses, an  old  native woman had taken me  in for  Christian  charity--that
sounds queer, doesn't  it? She used to  sit huddled up  in the corner of the
hut, smoking a black pipe and spitting on the floor and crooning to herself.
However,  she  meant well,  and she told  me I might die in peace and nobody
should  disturb me. But the spirit of  contradiction was strong in me and  I
elected to live. It was rather a difficult job scrambling back  to life, and
sometimes I am inclined to think it was a great  deal of cry for very little
wool. Anyway that old woman's patience was wonderful; she kept  me--how long
was it?--nearly  four months lying  in her  hut, raving like a mad  thing at
intervals, and as vicious as a bear with a sore ear between-whiles. The pain
was pretty bad, you see, and my temper  had been spoiled  in childhood  with
overmuch coddling."
     "And then?"
     "Oh,  then--I got  up somehow and crawled away.  No, don't think it was
any  delicacy about taking a poor  woman's  charity--I was  past caring  for
that; it was only that I couldn't bear the place any longer. You talked just
now about my courage; if you had seen me then! The worst of the pain used to
come on every evening, about dusk; and in the afternoon I used to lie alone,
and watch the sun get lower and lower---- Oh, you can't understand! It makes
me sick to look at a sunset now!"
     A long pause.
     "Well, then I went up country, to  see if I could get work anywhere--it
would  have driven  me  mad to stay  in Lima. I  got as  far  as Cuzco,  and
there------ Really I don't know why  I'm inflicting all this ancient history
on you; it hasn't even the merit of being funny."
     She  raised  her  head  and looked at him with  deep and  serious eyes.
"PLEASE don't talk that way," she said.
     He bit his lip and tore off another piece of the rug-fringe.
     "Shall I go on?" he asked after a moment.
     "If--if you will. I am afraid it is horrible to you to remember."
     "Do you think I forget when  I  hold my tongue?  It's  worse then.  But
don't  imagine it's the  thing  itself  that haunts me so. It is the fact of
having lost the power over myself."
     "I--don't think I quite understand."
     "I mean, it is the fact of having come to the end of my courage, to the
point where I found myself a coward."
     "Surely there is a limit to what anyone can bear."
     "Yes; and the man who has  once reached that limit  never knows when he
may reach it again."
     "Would you mind telling me," she asked, hesitating, "how you came to be
stranded out there alone at twenty?"
     "Very simply: I had a good opening in life, at home in the old country,
and ran away from it."
     "Why?"
     He laughed again in his quick, harsh way.
     "Why? Because I was a priggish young cub, I suppose. I had been brought
up in an over-luxurious home,  and  coddled and faddled after till I thought
the world was  made of pink cotton-wool  and sugared almonds.  Then one fine
day I  found out that someone I had  trusted  had deceived me. Why,  how you
start! What is it?"
     "Nothing. Go on, please."
     "I found out that I had been tricked into believing a lie; a common bit
of experience, of course; but, as I tell you, I was young  and priggish, and
thought  that liars  go to  hell. So I ran away  from home  and plunged into
South America to  sink or swim as I could, without a cent in my pocket or  a
word of Spanish  in my tongue,  or  anything but  white hands and  expensive
habits  to  get my bread  with.  And the natural result was that I got a dip
into the real hell to cure me of imagining sham ones. A pretty thorough dip,
too--it  was just  five years before  the Duprez  expedition  came along and
pulled me out."
     "Five years! Oh, that is terrible! And had you no friends?"
     "Friends! I"--he turned  on  her  with sudden fierceness--"I have NEVER
had a friend!"
     The next instant  he seemed a little ashamed of his vehemence, and went
on quickly:
     "You  mustn't take all this too seriously; I dare say I  made the worst
of things,  and really  it  wasn't so  bad the  first year and a half; I was
young and strong and I managed to scramble along fairly well till the Lascar
put his mark on me. But after  that I couldn't get work. It's wonderful what
an effectual tool a poker is if you handle it properly; and  nobody cares to
employ a cripple."
     "What sort of work did you do?"
     "What I could get. For some time I lived by odd-jobbing  for the blacks
on the sugar  plantations,  fetching and carrying and so on. It's one of the
curious things in life,  by  the way, that  slaves always contrive to have a
slave of their own, and there's nothing a negro likes so much as a white fag
to bully. But it was no use;  the overseers  always turned me off. I was too
lame to  be  quick; and I couldn't manage the  heavy  loads. And then I  was
always getting  these  attacks of inflammation, or  whatever the  confounded
thing is.
     "After some time I went down  to the silver-mines and tried to get work
there; but  it was all no good. The  managers laughed at the very notion  of
taking me on, and as for the men, they made a dead set at me."
     "Why was that?"
     "Oh, human nature, I suppose; they saw I had only one hand that I could
hit back with. They're a mangy,  half-caste lot; negroes and Zambos  mostly.
And then  those horrible coolies! So at  last I  got enough of that, and set
off to  tramp the country at random;  just wandering about, on the chance of
something turning up."
     "To tramp? With that lame foot!"
     He looked up with a sudden, piteous catching of the breath.
     "I--I was hungry," he said.
     She turned  her head a little  away and  rested her  chin on  one hand.
After  a moment's silence he began again, his voice sinking lower and  lower
as he spoke:
     "Well, I tramped, and tramped, till I was nearly mad with tramping, and
nothing  came  of it.  I got  down into Ecuador, and there it was worse than
ever.  Sometimes I'd  get  a bit  of  tinkering to do,--I'm  a  pretty  fair
tinker,--or an  errand  to  run,  or  a  pigstye to  clean out; sometimes  I
did--oh, I hardly know what. And then at last, one day------"
     The  slender,  brown hand clenched  itself suddenly  on  the table, and
Gemma, raising her head, glanced  at him anxiously. His side-face was turned
towards her, and  she could see a vein on  the temple beating like a hammer,
with  quick, irregular strokes. She bent  forward and  laid a gentle hand on
his arm. "Never mind the rest; it's almost too horrible to talk about."
     He stared doubtfully at the hand, shook his head, and went on steadily:
     "Then one day  I met a travelling variety show. You  remember that  one
the other  night;  well, that sort of thing, only coarser and more indecent.
The  Zambos  are not  like these  gentle  Florentines; they  don't care  for
anything that  is  not  foul or  brutal.  There  was  bull-fighting, too, of
course. They  had camped out by the roadside for the night; and I went up to
their tent to beg.  Well, the weather  was hot  and I  was half starved, and
so--I fainted at the door of the tent. I had a trick of fainting suddenly at
that time,  like a boarding-school girl with tight stays. So they took me in
and  gave me brandy, and food, and so on;  and then--the next  morning--they
offered me----"
     Another pause.
     "They wanted a hunchback, or monstrosity of some  kind; for the boys to
pelt  with  orange-peel  and  banana-skins--something   to  set  the  blacks
laughing------  You saw  the  clown that night-- well,  I was  that--for two
years. I suppose you have a  humanitarian feeling about negroes and Chinese.
Wait till you've been at their mercy!
     "Well, I learned to do the tricks. I was not quite deformed enough; but
they  set that right with an artificial  hump and made the most of this foot
and arm----  And the Zambos  are not  critical;  they're easily satisfied if
only they can get hold of some live thing to torture--the fool's dress makes
a good deal of difference, too.
     "The  only difficulty was  that I was so often ill and unable  to play.
Sometimes, if the  manager was out of  temper,  he would insist on my coming
into the ring when I had  these attacks on;  and  I believe the people liked
those evenings best. Once, I remember,  I fainted right off with the pain in
the middle of  the  performance----  When  I came to  my  senses again,  the
audience had got round me--hooting and yelling and pelting me with------"
     "Don't! I can't hear any more! Stop, for God's sake!"
     She was standing  up with both hands  over her ears. He broke off, and,
looking up, saw the glitter of tears in her eyes.
     "Damn it all, what an idiot I am!" he said under his breath.
     She  crossed  the room and stood  for a little while looking out of the
window. When she turned round, the Gadfly was again leaning on the table and
covering his  eyes with one hand. He had evidently  forgotten her  presence,
and she  sat down beside him without speaking. After a long silence she said
slowly:
     "I want to ask you a question."
     "Yes?" without moving.
     "Why did you not cut your throat?"
     He looked up in grave surprise. "I did not expect YOU to ask that,"  he
said. "And what about my work? Who would have done it for me?"
     "Your work----  Ah,  I see! You talked  just now about  being a coward;
well, if  you have come through that and  kept to your purpose, you are  the
very bravest man that I have ever met."
     He covered  his eyes again, and  held her  hand in  a close  passionate
clasp. A silence that seemed to have no end fell around them.
     Suddenly  a  clear and fresh soprano voice  rang  out  from  the garden
below, singing a verse of a doggerel French song:
     "Eh, Pierrot! Danse, Pierrot! Danse un peu, mon pauvre Jeannot! Vive la
danse  et l'allegresse! Jouissons de notre bell' jeunesse! Si moi  je pleure
ou moi je soupire, Si moi je  fais la triste figure-- Monsieur, ce n'est que
pour rire! Ha! Ha, ha, ha! Monsieur, ce n'est que pour rire!"
     At  the first words the Gadfly tore  his  hand from Gemma's and  shrank
away with a  stifled groan. She clasped both hands round his arm and pressed
it firmly, as she might have pressed  that of a person undergoing a surgical
operation.  When  the song  broke  off and a chorus of laughter and applause
came from the garden, he looked up with the eyes of a tortured animal.
     "Yes, it is Zita," he said slowly; "with her officer friends. She tried
to  come in here  the other night, before Riccardo  came. I should have gone
mad if she had touched me!"
     "But she does not know," Gemma protested softly. "She cannot guess that
she is hurting you."
     "She  is like a Creole," he  answered, shuddering. "Do you remember her
face  that  night  when  we  brought in  the  beggar-child? That is how  the
half-castes look when they laugh."
     Another burst of laughter came from  the garden. Gemma rose  and opened
the window. Zita, with a gold-embroidered scarf wound coquettishly round her
head, was standing  in the garden path, holding up a  bunch of  violets, for
the  possession  of  which  three  young  cavalry officers  appeared  to  be
competing.
     "Mme. Reni!" said Gemma.
     Zita's face darkened like a thunder-cloud. "Madame?" she said,  turning
and raising her eyes with a defiant look.
     "Would  your friends mind speaking a little more softly? Signor Rivarez
is very unwell."
     The gipsy flung down  her  violets. "Allez-vous en!" she said,  turning
sharply on the astonished officers. "Vous m'embetez, messieurs!"
     She went slowly out into the road. Gemma closed the window.
     "They have gone away," she said, turning to him.
     "Thank you. I--I am sorry to have troubled you."
     "It was no trouble." He at once detected the hesitation in her voice.
     "'But?'" he  said. "That sentence was  not finished, signora; there was
an unspoken 'but' in the back of your mind."
     "If  you look into the backs of people's minds, you mustn't be offended
at  what you  read there.  It  is  not my  affair, of  course, but  I cannot
understand----"
     "My aversion to Mme. Reni? It is only when----"
     "No, your caring to live with her when you feel that aversion. It seems
to me an insult to her as a woman and as----"
     "A  woman!" He  burst  out  laughing  harshly. "Is THAT what you call a
woman? 'Madame, ce n'est que pour rire!'"
     "That  is  not fair!" she said.  "You have no  right to speak of her in
that way to anyone-- especially to another woman!"
     He  turned away, and lay with wide-open eyes, looking out of the window
at the sinking sun. She lowered the blind  and closed the  shutters, that he
might not see  it set; then sat down at the table  by the  other window  and
took up her knitting again.
     "Would you like the lamp?" she asked after a moment.
     He shook his head.
     When  it grew too dark to see, Gemma rolled up her knitting and laid it
in the  basket. For some time  she sat  with folded hands, silently watching
the Gadfly's motionless figure. The  dim evening light, falling on his face,
seemed  to soften away its hard, mocking, self-assertive look, and to deepen
the tragic lines about the  mouth. By some fanciful association of ideas her
memory  went vividly back to the stone cross which  her father had set up in
memory of Arthur, and to its inscription:
     "All thy waves and billows have gone over me."
     An hour passed  in unbroken  silence.  At last she rose and went softly
out of the room. Coming back with a lamp,  she paused for a moment, thinking
that the Gadfly was asleep. As the light fell on his face he turned round.
     "I have made you a cup of coffee," she said, setting clown the lamp.
     "Put it down a minute. Will you come here, please."
     He took both her hands in his.
     "I have  been thinking," he said. "You are quite right;  it  is an ugly
tangle I have got my life into. But remember, a man does not  meet every day
a  woman  whom  he  can--love;  and I--I  have been  in  deep waters.  I  am
afraid----"
     "Afraid----"
     "Of  the dark. Sometimes I DARE not  be  alone at  night.  I  must have
something living--something solid beside me. It is the outer darkness, where
shall be---- No,  no!  It's not  that; that's a sixpenny toy hell;--it's the
INNER  darkness.  There's  no  weeping  or  gnashing  of  teeth  there; only
silence--silence----"
     His eyes dilated. She was quite still,  hardly  breathing till he spoke
again.
     "This   is   all  mystification   to   you,   isn't   it?   You   can't
understand--luckily for you. What I mean is that I have a pretty fair chance
of going mad if I try to live  quite alone---- Don't think too hardly of me,
if you  can  help it;  I am not  altogether  the  vicious brute you  perhaps
imagine me to be."
     "I cannot try to judge for you," she  answered. "I have not suffered as
you  have. But--I have been in  rather deep water too, in another way; and I
think--I am sure--that if you let the fear  of anything drive  you  to do  a
really  cruel or unjust or  ungenerous thing, you will regret it afterwards.
For the rest--if you have failed in this one thing, I know that I,  in  your
place, should have failed altogether,--should have cursed God and died."
     He still kept her hands in his.
     "Tell  me,"  he said very  softly; "have you ever in your  life  done a
really cruel thing?"
     She did not answer, but her head sank down, and two great tears fell on
his hand.
     "Tell me!" he whispered passionately, clasping her hands tighter. "Tell
me! I have told you all my misery."
     "Yes,--once,--long ago. And I did  it to the person I loved best in the
world."
     The hands that clasped hers were  trembling violently; but they did not
loosen their hold.
     "He  was  a  comrade," she  went on; "and  I believed a slander against
him,--a common glaring lie that the police had invented. I struck him in the
face for a  traitor;  and he  went away and drowned himself. Then, two  days
later, I found out that he had been quite innocent. Perhaps that is  a worse
memory than any of yours. I would cut off my right hand to undo what it  has
done."
     Something  swift  and  dangerous--something  that   she  had  not  seen
before,--flashed into his eyes. He bent his head down with a furtive, sudden
gesture and kissed the hand.
     She drew back with a startled face. "Don't!" she  cried out  piteously.
"Please don't ever do that again! You hurt me!"
     "Do you think you didn't hurt the man you killed?"
     "The man  I--killed----  Ah, there is Cesare at the gate  at last! I--I
must go!"
     . . . . .
     When Martini came into the room  he found the  Gadfly lying  alone with
the untouched coffee  beside him,  swearing softly to  himself in a languid,
spiritless way, as though he got no satisfaction out of it
        PART II: CHAPTER IX.
     A FEW days  later, the Gadfly, still rather  pale and limping more than
usual, entered the reading room of the public library and asked for Cardinal
Montanelli's sermons. Riccardo,  who was reading at a table near him, looked
up. He liked  the Gadfly very  much, but could not digest this one  trait in
him--this curious personal maliciousness.
     "Are you preparing another volley  against that unlucky  Cardinal?"  he
asked half irritably.
     "My  dear  fellow, why  do you a-a-always attribute evil m-m-motives to
people? It's m-most  unchristian.  I am  preparing an  essay on contemporary
theology for the n-n-new paper."
     "What new paper?"  Riccardo frowned. It was perhaps an open secret that
a new press-law  was  expected  and  that  the  Opposition  was preparing to
astonish  the town with a radical  newspaper; but still it  was, formally, a
secret.
     "The Swindlers' Gazette, of course, or the Church Calendar."
     "Sh-sh! Rivarez, we are disturbing the other readers."
     "Well  then,  stick  to your  surgery,  if  that's  your  subject,  and
l-l-leave me to th-theology--  that's mine. I  d-d-don't interfere with your
treatment of broken bones, though I know  a p-p-precious lot more about them
than you do."
     He sat down to his volume of  sermons with  an intent  and  preoccupied
face. One of the librarians came up to him.
     "Signor Rivarez! I think you were  in the Duprez  expedition, exploring
the  tributaries  of  the  Amazon? Perhaps  you  will kindly  help us  in  a
difficulty. A lady has been inquiring for the records of the expedition, and
they are at the binder's."
     "What does she want to know?"
     "Only  in what  year the expedition started  and when it passed through
Ecuador."
     "It started from Paris in  the autumn of 1837, and passed through Quito
in April, 1838. We were three years in Brazil; then went down to Rio and got
back to Paris in the summer  of 1841. Does  the  lady want the  dates of the
separate discoveries?"
     "No, thank you; only these.  I have written them down. Beppo, take this
paper to Signora Bolla, please. Many thanks, Signor  Rivarez.  I am sorry to
have troubled you."
     The  Gadfly leaned back in  his chair with a perplexed frown.  What did
she want the dates for? When they passed through Ecuador----
     Gemma went  home with the slip of paper in her  hand.  April, 1838--and
Arthur had died in May, 1833. Five years--
     She began pacing up and down her room. She had slept badly the last few
nights, and there were dark shadows under her eyes.
     Five  years;--and an "overluxurious home"-- and "someone he had trusted
had deceived him" --had deceived him--and he had found it out----
     She  stopped  and put  up both hands to her head. Oh, this was  utterly
mad--it was not possible--it was absurd----
     And yet, how they had dragged that harbour!
     Five  years--and he  was "not twenty-one" when the Lascar----  Then  he
must have been nineteen when he ran away from home. Had he not said: "A year
and a half----"  Where  did  he  get those blue eyes from, and  that nervous
restlessness of the fingers? And why was  he so  bitter  against Montanelli?
Five years--five years------
     If she could but know that  he was drowned--if she  could but have seen
the  body; some day, surely, the  old wound would  have left off aching, the
old  memory would have lost its terrors. Perhaps in another twenty years she
would have learned to look back without shrinking.
     All her youth had been poisoned by the  thought  of what she had  done.
Resolutely, day after day and year after  year, she  had fought  against the
demon of remorse. Always she had remembered that her work lay in the future;
always had shut her eyes  and ears to the haunting  spectre of the past. And
day after  day, year after year, the image  of the drowned body drifting out
to sea had never left her, and the bitter cry that she could not silence had
risen in her heart: "I have killed Arthur! Arthur is dead!" Sometimes it had
seemed to her that her burden was too heavy to be borne.
     Now she would have given  half her life to have that burden back again.
If she  had killed him--  that was a familiar grief; she  had endured it too
long to sink under it now. But if she had driven him, not into the water but
into------ She sat down, covering her eyes with both hands. And her life had
been darkened for his sake, because he was dead! If she had brought upon him
nothing worse than death----
     Steadily, pitilessly she went back,  step by step, through the hell  of
his  past  life. It was  as vivid to her as though she had  seen and felt it
all; the helpless shivering of the naked soul, the mockery that was bitterer
than death, the horror of loneliness, the  slow, grinding, relentless agony.
It was as vivid as if she had sat beside him in the filthy Indian hut; as if
she  had suffered  with him  in  the  silver-mines, the coffee  fields,  the
horrible variety show--
     The variety show---- No, she must shut out that image, at least; it was
enough to drive one mad to sit and think of it.
     She opened  a little drawer  in her writing-desk. It  contained the few
personal relics which  she  could not bring herself  to destroy. She was not
given to the  hoarding up  of  sentimental trifles; and the preservation  of
these keepsakes was a concession to that weaker side of her nature which she
kept under with so steady a hand. She very seldom allowed herself to look at
them.
     Now she  took them out, one after another:  Giovanni's first letter  to
her, and the  flowers that had lain in  his dead hand; a lock of her  baby's
hair and a withered leaf from her father's grave. At  the back of the drawer
was  a miniature  portrait of  Arthur  at ten  years old--the only  existing
likeness of him.
     She sat down with it in her hands and looked at the beautiful  childish
head,  till the face of the real Arthur rose up afresh before her. How clear
it was in every detail! The  sensitive lines of the mouth, the wide, earnest
eyes,  the  seraphic  purity  of expression--they were  graven in  upon  her
memory, as though he had died yesterday. Slowly the blinding tears welled up
and hid the portrait.
     Oh, how could she have thought such a thing! It was like sacrilege even
to dream of  this  bright,  far-off spirit,  bound to the sordid miseries of
life. Surely the  gods had loved him a  little,  and had  let him die young!
Better a thousand times that he should pass into utter nothingness than that
he should live  and be the Gadfly--the  Gadfly, with his  faultless neckties
and his doubtful witticisms, his bitter tongue and his ballet girl!  No, no!
It was all  a horrible,  senseless fancy; and she  had vexed her  heart with
vain imaginings. Arthur was dead.
     "May I come in?" asked a soft voice at the door.
     She  started so that the portrait fell from her  hand,  and the Gadfly,
limping across the room, picked it up and handed it to her.
     "How you startled me!" she said.
     "I am s-so sorry. Perhaps I am disturbing you?"
     "No. I was only turning over some old things."
     She hesitated for a moment; then handed him back the miniature.
     "What do you think of that head?"
     While he  looked at it she watched his face as though her life depended
upon its expression; but it was merely negative and critical.
     "You have  set me  a difficult task," he said. "The portrait  is faded,
and a  child's face is always  hard to read.  But I should  think that child
would grow into an unlucky man, and the wisest thing he could do would be to
abstain from growing into a man at all."
     "Why?"
     "Look at the line of  the under-lip. Th-th-that  is the  sort of nature
that feels  pain as pain and wrong  as wrong;  and the world has no r-r-room
for such people; it needs people who feel nothing but their work."
     "Is it at all like anyone you know?"
     He looked at the portrait more closely.
     "Yes. What a curious thing! Of course it is; very like."
     "Like whom?"
     "C-c-cardinal   Montan-nelli.  I  wonder  whether  his   irreproachable
Eminence has any nephews, by the way? Who is it, if I may ask?"
     "It is a portrait, taken in childhood, of the friend  I  told you about
the other day----"
     "Whom you killed?"
     She winced in spite  of herself. How lightly, how  cruelly he used that
dreadful word!
     "Yes, whom I killed--if he is really dead."
     "If?"
     She kept her eyes on his face.
     "I have sometimes doubted," she said. "The body was never found. He may
have run away from home, like you, and gone to South America."
     "Let us hope not. That would be a bad memory to carry about with you. I
have d-d-done some hard fighting in my t-time, and have sent m-more than one
man to Hades, perhaps; but  if I had it on my conscience that I had sent any
l-living thing to South America, I should sleep badly----"
     "Then  do you  believe," she  interrupted, coming  nearer  to him  with
clasped hands, "that if he  were not drowned,--if he had  been  through your
experience instead,--he would never come back  and let the past  go? Do  you
believe  he would  NEVER forget?  Remember, it has  cost me  something, too.
Look!"
     She pushed back the heavy waves of hair from her forehead.  Through the
black locks ran a broad white streak.
     There was a long silence.
     "I  think,"  the  Gadfly said slowly, "that the  dead are  better dead.
Forgetting  some things is a difficult matter. And if I were in the place of
your dead friend, I would s-s-stay dead. The REVENANT is an ugly spectre."
     She put the portrait back into its drawer and locked the desk.
     "That  is hard doctrine,"  she  said.  "And  now  we  will  talk  about
something else."
     "I  came to  have a little business talk with  you, if I may--a private
one, about a plan that I have in my head."
     She drew  a chair to the table and sat down. "What do  you think of the
projected press-law?" he began, without a trace of his usual stammer.
     "What  I think of it? I think it will not be  of much value, but half a
loaf is better than no bread."
     "Undoubtedly. Then do you intend to work on one of the new papers these
good folk here are preparing to start?"
     "I thought of doing so.  There is always a great deal of practical work
to  be  done  in starting  any  paper--printing and circulation arrangements
and----"
     "How long are you going to waste your mental gifts in that fashion?"
     "Why 'waste'?"
     "Because it is  waste.  You know quite well  that you have a far better
head  than most of  the  men  you are working with,  and you let them make a
regular drudge  and Johannes factotum of you. Intellectually you are as  far
ahead  of Grassini  and  Galli  as  if  they  were  schoolboys;  yet you sit
correcting their proofs like a printer's devil."
     "In the first  place,  I  don't spend all my time in correcting proofs;
and moreover it seems to me that you  exaggerate my  mental capacities. They
are by no means so brilliant as you think."
     "I  don't think them brilliant at all," he answered quietly;  "but I do
think them  sound  and solid,  which is  of  much more  importance. At those
dreary committee meetings it is always you  who put your finger on the  weak
spot in everybody's logic."
     "You are not fair  to  the  others. Martini, for  instance, has  a very
logical  head, and there is  no doubt about the  capacities  of Fabrizi  and
Lega. Then Grassini has a  sounder knowledge of  Italian economic statistics
than any official in the country, perhaps."
     "Well, that's not saying much; but let us lay them and their capacities
aside. The fact remains that you, with  such gifts as you possess, might  do
more important work and fill a more responsible post than at present."
     "I am  quite  satisfied with my position. The work I am doing is not of
very much value, perhaps, but we all do what we can."
     "Signora Bolla, you and I have gone too far to play at compliments  and
modest denials now. Tell me honestly, do you recognize that you are using up
your brain on work which persons inferior to you could do as well?"
     "Since you press me for an answer--yes, to some extent."
     "Then why do you let that go on?"
     No answer.
     "Why do you let it go on?"
     "Because--I can't help it."
     "Why?"
     She looked up reproachfully. "That is  unkind --it's not  fair to press
me so."
     "But all the same you are going to tell me why."
     "If  you  must have it, then--because  my life  has  been smashed  into
pieces, and I  have not the energy to start anything  REAL, now. I am  about
fit to be a  revolutionary cab-horse,  and  do the  party's  drudge-work. At
least I do it conscientiously, and it must be done by somebody."
     "Certainly  it  must  be done by  somebody; but not  always by the same
person."
     "It's about all I'm fit for."
     He looked at her with half-shut eyes, inscrutably. Presently she raised
her head.
     "We  are returning  to  the old  subject; and this was to be a business
talk. It  is quite useless, I assure you, to  tell me I might have done  all
sorts of things. I shall never do them now. But I may be able to help you in
thinking out your plan. What is it?"
     "You begin by telling me that it is useless for me to suggest anything,
and then ask  what I want to suggest. My plan requires  your help in action,
not only in thinking out."
     "Let me hear it and then we will discuss."
     "Tell  me  first whether you have heard anything  about schemes  for  a
rising in Venetia."
     "I have heard  of  nothing but schemes for  risings and Sanfedist plots
ever since the amnesty, and I fear I am as sceptical about the one as  about
the other."
     "So  am I,  in  most  cases;  but  I  am  speaking  of  really  serious
preparations for  a rising  of the whole  province  against the Austrians. A
good many  young  fellows  in  the  Papal  States--particularly in the  Four
Legations--are   secretly  preparing   to  get  across  there  and  join  as
volunteers. And I hear from my friends in the Romagna----"
     "Tell me," she interrupted, "are  you quite sure that these friends  of
yours can be trusted?"
     "Quite sure. I know them personally, and have worked with them."
     "That  is, they are members of  the 'sect' to which you belong? Forgive
my  scepticism, but I  am always a little  doubtful  as  to the accuracy  of
information  received  from  secret societies.  It  seems  to  me  that  the
habit----"
     "Who told you I belonged to a 'sect'?" he interrupted sharply.
     "No one; I guessed it."
     "Ah!" He leaned back in his chair and looked  at her, frowning. "Do you
always guess people's private affairs?" he said after a moment.
     "Very often. I am rather observant, and have a  habit of putting things
together. I  tell you that so that you may be careful when you don't want me
to know a thing."
     "I don't mind your knowing anything  so  long as  it goes no further. I
suppose this has not----"
     She lifted  her  head with a gesture of half-offended surprise. "Surely
that is an unnecessary question!" she said.
     "Of course I know you  would not  speak of anything to outsiders; but I
thought that perhaps, to the members of your party----"
     "The  party's business is with facts, not with my personal  conjectures
and fancies. Of course I have never mentioned the subject to anyone."
     "Thank you. Do you happen to have guessed which sect I belong to?"
     "I  hope--you  must not take  offence  at my frankness;  it was you who
started this talk, you know---- I do hope it is not the 'Knifers.'"
     "Why do you hope that?"
     "Because you are fit for better things."
     "We are  all fit  for better  things than we ever do. There is your own
answer back again. However,  it  is not the 'Knifers' that I  belong to, but
the  'Red  Girdles.' They  are  a  steadier  lot, and take  their work  more
seriously."
     "Do you mean the work of knifing?"
     "That, among other  things. Knives are  very useful in  their way;  but
only when you have a  good, organized propaganda behind them. That is what I
dislike  in the  other sect. They think  a knife can settle  all the world's
difficulties; and that's a mistake. It can settle a good many, but not all."
     "Do you honestly believe that it settles any?"
     He looked at her in surprise.
     "Of course," she went on, "it eliminates, for the moment, the practical
difficulty caused by the presence of a clever spy or objectionable official;
but whether  it  does not  create  worse  difficulties  in place of  the one
removed  is another  question. It seems  to me like the parable of the swept
and garnished house and the seven devils. Every assassination only makes the
police  more  vicious  and  the  people  more  accustomed  to  violence  and
brutality, and the last state of the community may be worse than the first."
     "What do  you  think will  happen when  the  revolution  comes? Do  you
suppose the  people won't have  to get  accustomed to violence then?  War is
war."
     "Yes, but  open  revolution is another matter. It is one moment in  the
people's  life, and it is the price we have to pay for all  our progress. No
doubt  fearful things will happen; they  must in  every revolution. But they
will be isolated  facts--exceptional features  of an exceptional moment. The
horrible thing about this promiscuous knifing is  that  it  becomes a habit.
The people get  to look upon it  as an every-day occurrence, and their sense
of the sacredness  of human life gets blunted. I have  not been much  in the
Romagna, but what  little  I  have  seen  of  the people has  given  me  the
impression that they have  got,  or are getting, into a mechanical  habit of
violence."
     "Surely even that is  better  than a mechanical habit of  obedience and
submission."
     "I don't think  so. All mechanical habits are bad and slavish, and this
one is  ferocious  as well.  Of  course,  if you  look upon  the work of the
revolutionist as the mere wresting of  certain definite concessions from the
government,  then the secret sect and  the  knife must  seem to you the best
weapons, for there is nothing  else which  all  governments so dread. But if
you think, as I  do, that to  force the government's hand is not  an  end in
itself, but only a means to an end,  and that what we really  need to reform
is the relation between man and man, then you  must  go differently to work.
Accustoming ignorant people to the sight  of  blood  is not the way to raise
the value they put on human life."
     "And the value they put on religion?"
     "I don't understand."
     He smiled.
     "I think we differ as to where the root of the mischief lies. You place
it in a lack of appreciation of the value of human life."
     "Rather of the sacredness of human personality."
     "Put it  as you like. To me the great cause of our muddles and mistakes
seems to lie in the mental disease called religion."
     "Do you mean any religion in particular?"
     "Oh,  no!  That  is a mere question of  external symptoms. The  disease
itself  is what is  called a  religious attitude of  mind. It  is the morbid
desire to set up a fetich and adore it, to fall down and worship  something.
It make