obliged him to accept these new doctrines
through fear. No; he believed in the strength of the "idea," and in
the innocent evolution of humanity; he had only to work like the first
apostles of Christianity certain of the future, but without hurrying,
to see his ideas realised; he had only to fix his eyes on the day's
work, without thinking of the long years and centuries before it would
bear its fruit.

The ardour of his proselytising made him leave Paris at the end of
five years. He was anxious to see the world, to study for himself all
these social miseries, so as to judge what forces these disinherited
could command for their great transformation. Besides, he began to
find himself incommoded by the vigilance of the French police, on
account of his intimacy with the Russian students of the Quartier
Latin--young men with cold eyes and limp and dishevelled hair who were
endeavouring to implant in Paris the vengeances of Nihilism. In London
he came to know a young Englishwoman of weak health, but burning like
himself with all the ardour of revolutionary propaganda, who would
walk from morning till night in the lanes and surroundings of
workshops and laboratories, distributing pamphlets and printed
leaflets that she kept in a band-box that was always hanging on her
arm. In a short time Lucy became Gabriel's companion; they loved each
other without excitement, with a cold and quiet passion, more from
community of ideas than anything else, for the love of revolutionists,
dominated with the thought of rebellion against everything existing,
has not much room for any other feeling.

Luna and his companion went to Holland and thence to Belgium, settling
afterwards in Germany, always travelling from group to group of
"companions," taking up different work with that facility of
adaptation which seems universal among revolutionaries, who wander
over the world penniless, enduring every sort of privation, but
finding always in their difficulties some brotherly hand to raise them
and set them again on the path.

After eight years of this life Gabriel's friend died of consumption.
They were then in Italy, and Luna, finding himself alone, understood
for the first time how much support the gentle companion of his life
had given him. In his sorrow for the loss of Lucy he forgot for a
while his revolutionary enthusiasm, lamenting only the void left in
his life. He had not loved her as most men love, but she was his
companion, his sist