t you have often crossed the frontier
before and always been successful."

"Yes, and this time I shall fail."

"But why? How can you know?"

The Gadfly smiled drearily.

"Do you remember the German legend of the man that died when he met his
own Double? No? It appeared to him at night in a lonely place, wringing
its hands in despair. Well, I met mine the last time I was in the hills;
and when I cross the frontier again I shan't come back."

Martini came up to him and put a hand on the back of his chair.

"Listen, Rivarez; I don't understand a word of all this metaphysical
stuff, but I do understand one thing: If you feel about it that way, you
are not in a fit state to go. The surest way to get taken is to go with
a conviction that you will be taken. You must be ill, or out of sorts
somehow, to get maggots of that kind into your head. Suppose I go
instead of you? I can do any practical work there is to be done, and you
can send a message to your men, explaining------"

"And let you get killed instead? That would be very clever."

"Oh, I'm not likely to get killed! They don't know me as they do you.
And, besides, even if I did------"

He stopped, and the Gadfly looked up with a slow, inquiring gaze.
Martini's hand dropped by his side.

"She very likely wouldn't miss me as much as she would you," he said
in his most matter-of-fact voice. "And then, besides, Rivarez, this is
public business, and we have to look at it from the point of view
of utility--the greatest good of the greatest number. Your 'final
value'---isn't that what the economists call it?--is higher than mine;
I have brains enough to see that, though I haven't any cause to be
particularly fond of you. You are a bigger man than I am; I'm not sure
that you are a better one, but there's more of you, and your death would
be a greater loss than mine."

From the way he spoke he might have been discussing the value of shares
on the Exchange. The Gadfly looked up, shivering as if with cold.

"Would you have me wait till my grave opens of itself to swallow me up?

"If I must die,
I will encounter darkness as a bride----

Look here, Martini, you and I are talking nonsense."

"You are, certainly," said Martini gruffly.

"Yes, and so are you. For Heaven's sake, don't let's go in for romantic
self-sacrifice, like Don Carlos and Marquis Posa. This is the nineteenth
century; and if it's my business to die, I have got to do it."

"A