moment like
this. Your arrest would mean the failure of the whole thing."

But the Gadfly was difficult to convince, and the discussion went on
and on without coming nearer to any settlement. Gemma was beginning to
realize how nearly inexhaustible was the fund of quiet obstinacy in
his character; and, had the matter not been one about which she felt
strongly, she would probably have yielded for the sake of peace. This,
however, was a case in which she could not conscientiously give way; the
practical advantage to be gained from the proposed journey seemed to her
not sufficiently important to be worth the risk, and she could not help
suspecting that his desire to go was prompted less by a conviction of
grave political necessity than by a morbid craving for the excitement of
danger. He had got into the habit of risking his neck, and his tendency
to run into unnecessary peril seemed to her a form of intemperance
which should be quietly but steadily resisted. Finding all her arguments
unavailing against his dogged resolve to go his own way, she fired her
last shot.

"Let us be honest about it, anyway," she said; "and call things by
their true names. It is not Domenichino's difficulty that makes you so
determined to go. It is your own personal passion for----"

"It's not true!" he interrupted vehemently. "He is nothing to me; I
don't care if I never see him again."

He broke off, seeing in her face that he had betrayed himself. Their
eyes met for an instant, and dropped; and neither of them uttered the
name that was in both their minds.

"It--it is not Domenichino I want to save," he stammered at last, with
his face half buried in the cat's fur; "it is that I--I understand the
danger of the work failing if he has no help."

She passed over the feeble little subterfuge, and went on as if there
had been no interruption:

"It is your passion for running into danger which makes you want to go
there. You have the same craving for danger when you are worried that
you had for opium when you were ill."

"It was not I that asked for the opium," he said defiantly; "it was the
others who insisted on giving it to me."

"I dare say. You plume yourself a little on your stoicism, and to
ask for physical relief would have hurt your pride; but it is rather
flattered than otherwise when you risk your life to relieve the
irritation of your nerves. And yet, after all, the distinction is a
merely conventional one."

He drew the cat