"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 h.e.l.l. 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 h.e.l.l 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 n.o.body 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 f.a.g 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 coa.r.s.er 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 G.o.d'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.

"d.a.m.n 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 pa.s.sionate 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!