THE Gadfly's recovery was rapid. One afternoon in the following week
Riccardo found him lying on the sofa in a Turkish dressing-gown,
chatting with Martini and Galli. He even talked about going downstairs;
but Riccardo merely laughed at the suggestion and asked whether he would
like a tramp across the valley to Fiesole to start with.
“You might go and call on the Grassinis for a change,” he added
wickedly. “I'm sure madame would be delighted to see you, especially
now, when you look so pale and interesting.”
The Gadfly clasped his hands with a tragic gesture.
“Bless my soul! I never thought of that! She'd take me for one of
Italy's martyrs, and talk patriotism to me. I should have to act up to
the part, and tell her I've been cut to pieces in an underground dungeon
and stuck together again rather badly; and she'd want to know exactly
what the process felt like. You don't think she'd believe it, Riccardo?
I'll bet you my Indian dagger against the bottled tape-worm in your
den that she'll swallow the biggest lie I can invent. That's a generous
offer, and you'd better jump at it.”
“Thanks, I'm not so fond of murderous tools as you are.”
“Well, a tape-worm is as murderous as a dagger, any day, and not half so
pretty.”
“But as it happens, my dear fellow, I don't want the dagger and I do
want the tape-worm. Martini, I must run off. Are you in charge of this
obstreperous patient?”
“Only till three o'clock. Galli and I have to go to San Miniato, and
Signora Bolla is coming till I can get back.”
“Signora Bolla!” the Gadfly repeated in a tone of dismay. “Why,
Martini, this will never do! I can't have a lady bothered over me and my
ailments. Besides, where is she to sit? She won't like to come in here.”
“Since when have you gone in so fiercely for the proprieties?” asked
Riccardo, laughing. “My good man, Signora Bolla is head nurse in general
to all of us. She has looked after sick people ever since she was in
short frocks, and does it better than any sister of mercy I know. Won't
like to come into your room! Why, you might be talking of the Grassini
woman! I needn't leave any directions if she's coming, Martini. Heart
alive, it's half-past two; I must be off!”
“Now, Rivarez, take your physic before she comes,” said Galli,
approaching the sofa with a medicine glass.
“Damn the physic!” The Gadfly had reached the irritable stage of
convalescence, and was inclined to give his devoted nurses a bad time.
“W-what do you want to d-d-dose me with all sorts of horrors for now the
pain is gone?”
“Just because I don't want it to come back. You wouldn't like it if you
collapsed when Signora Bolla is here and she had to give you opium.”
“My g-good sir, if that pain is going to come back it will come; it's
not a t-toothache to be frightened away with your trashy mixtures. They
are about as much use as a t-toy squirt for a house on fire. However, I
suppose you must have your way.”
He took the glass with his left hand, and the sight of the terrible
scars recalled Galli to the former subject of conversation.
“By the way,” he asked; “how did you get so much knocked about? In the
war, was it?”
“Now, didn't I just tell you it was a case of secret dungeons and----”
“Yes, that version is for Signora Grassini's benefit. Really, I suppose
it was in the war with Brazil?”
“Yes, I got a bit hurt there; and then hunting in the savage districts
and one thing and another.”
“Ah, yes; on the scientific expedition. You can fasten your shirt; I
have quite done. You seem to have had an exciting time of it out there.”
“Well, of course you can't live in savage countries without getting a
few adventures once in a way,” said the Gadfly lightly; “and you can
hardly expect them all to be pleasant.”
“Still, I don't understand how you managed to get so much knocked about
unless in a bad adventure with wild beasts--those scars on your left
arm, for instance.”
“Ah, that was in a puma-hunt. You see, I had fired----”
There was a knock at the door.
“Is the room tidy, Martini? Yes? Then please open the door. This is
really most kind, signora; you must excuse my not getting up.”
“Of course you mustn't get up; I have not come as a caller. I am a
little early, Cesare. I thought perhaps you were in a hurry to go.”
“I can stop for a quarter of an hour. Let me put your cloak in the other
room. Shall I take the basket, too?”
“Take care; those are new-laid eggs. Katie brought them in from Monte
Oliveto this morning. There are some Christmas roses for you, Signor
Rivarez; I know you are fond of flowers.”
She sat down beside the table and began clipping the stalks of the
flowers and arranging them in a vase.
“Well, Rivarez,” said Galli; “tell us the rest of the puma-hunt story;
you had just begun.”
“Ah, yes! Galli was asking me about life in South America, signora; and
I was telling him how I came to get my left arm spoiled. It was in Peru.
We had been wading a river on a puma-hunt, and when I fired at the beast
the powder wouldn't go off; it had got splashed with water. Naturally
the puma didn't wait for me to rectify that; and this is the result.”
“That must have been a pleasant experience.”
“Oh, not so bad! One must take the rough with the smooth, of course; but
it's a splendid life on the whole. Serpent-catching, for instance----”
He rattled on, telling anecdote after anecdote; now of the Argentine
war, now of the Brazilian expedition, now of hunting feats and
adventures with savages or wild beasts. Galli, with the delight of
a child hearing a fairy story, kept interrupting every moment to ask
questions. He was of the impressionable Neapolitan temperament and loved
everything sensational. Gemma took some knitting from her basket and
listened silently, with busy fingers and downcast eyes. Martini frowned
and fidgeted. The manner in which the anecdotes were told seemed to
him boastful and self-conscious; and, notwithstanding his unwilling
admiration for a man who could endure physical pain with the amazing
fortitude which he had seen the week before, he genuinely disliked the
Gadfly and all his works and ways.
“It must have been a glorious life!” sighed Galli with naive envy. “I
wonder you ever made up your mind to leave Brazil. Other countries must
seem so flat after it!”
“I think I was happiest in Peru and Ecuador,” said the Gadfly. “That
really is a magnificent tract of country. Of course it is very hot,
especially the coast district of Ecuador, and one has to rough it a bit;
but the scenery is superb beyond imagination.”
“I believe,” said Galli, “the perfect freedom of life in a barbarous
country would attract me more than any scenery. A man must feel his
personal, human dignity as he can never feel it in our crowded towns.”
“Yes,” the Gadfly answered; “that is----”
Gemma raised her eyes from her knitting and looked at him. He flushed
suddenly scarlet and broke off. There was a little pause.
“Surely it is not come on again?” asked Galli anxiously.
“Oh, nothing to speak of, thanks to your s-s-soothing application that I
b-b-blasphemed against. Are you going already, Martini?”
“Yes. Come along, Galli; we shall be late.”
Gemma followed the two men out of the room, and presently returned with
an egg beaten up in milk.
“Take this, please,” she said with mild authority; and sat down again to
her knitting. The Gadfly obeyed meekly.
For half an hour, neither spoke. Then the Gadfly said in a very low
voice:
“Signora Bolla!”
She looked up. He was tearing the fringe of the couch-rug, and kept his
eyes lowered.
“You didn't believe I was speaking the truth just now,” he began.
“I had not the smallest doubt that you were telling falsehoods,” she
answered quietly.
“You were quite right. I was telling falsehoods all the time.”
“Do you mean about the war?”
“About everything. I was not in that war at all; and as for the
expedition, I had a few adventures, of course, and most of those stories
are true, but it was not that way I got smashed. You have detected me in
one lie, so I may as well confess the lot, I suppose.”
“Does it not seem to you rather a waste of energy to invent so many
falsehoods?” she asked. “I should have thought it was hardly worth the
trouble.”
“What would you have? You know your own English proverb: 'Ask no
questions and you'll be told no lies.' It's no pleasure to me to fool
people that way, but I must answer them somehow when they ask what made
a cripple of me; and I may as well invent something pretty while I'm
about it. You saw how pleased Galli was.”
“Do you prefer pleasing Galli to speaking the truth?”
“The truth!” He looked up with the torn fringe in his hand. “You
wouldn't have me tell those people the truth? I'd cut my tongue out
first!” Then with an awkward, shy abruptness:
“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 down 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.