On the following morning Andrea called at the Engineering Offices. He wore his Italian shooting-dress; an eagle’s feather ornamented his hat, and a gun and a knapsack were slung across his shoulder. His face and his hands were white.
“So you have done with the tunnel,” said the cashier, or the “moneyman,” as they called him. “Well, nobody can blame you for it, for what remains to be done is mason’s work. To your account, then!”
The moneyman opened a book, wrote something on a piece of paper, and handed Andrea ten thousand lire in gold.
Andrea signed his name, put the gold into his knapsack and went.
He jumped into a workman’s train, and in ten minutes he had arrived at the fallen barrier. There were fires burning in the mountain, the workmen cheered when they saw him and waved their caps. It was splendid!
Ten more minutes and he was at the Swiss side. When he saw the daylight shining through the entrance to the tunnel, the train stopped and he got out.
He walked towards the green light, and came to the village and the green world, bathed in sunlight; the village had been rebuilt and looked prettier than before. And when the workmen saw him they saluted their first man.
He went straight up to a little house, and there, under a walnut tree, by the side of the bee-hives, stood Gertrude, calm, and a hundred times more beautiful and gentle. It looked as if she had stood there for eight years, waiting for him.
“Now I have come,” he said, “as I intended to come! Will you follow me to my country?”
“I will follow you wherever you go!”