“When was it?” he asked after a long pause; and his own voice, in his ears, was as dull and wearisome as everything else.
“This morning, at sunrise. The sergeant told me. He was there and saw it.”
Martini looked down and flicked a stray thread from his coat-sleeve.
Vanity of vanities; this also is vanity. He was to have died to-morrow. And now the land of his heart's desire had vanished, like the fairyland of golden sunset dreams that fades away when the darkness comes; and he was driven back into the world of every day and every night—the world of Grassini and Galli, of ciphering and pamphleteering, of party squabbles between comrades and dreary intrigues among Austrian spies—of the old revolutionary mill-round that maketh the heart sick. And somewhere down at the bottom of his consciousness there was a great empty place; a place that nothing and no one would fill any more, now that the Gadfly was dead.
Someone was asking him a question, and he raised his head, wondering what could be left that was worth the trouble of talking about.
“What did you say?”
“I was saying that of course you will break the news to her.”
Life, and all the horror of life, came back into Martini's face.
“How can I tell her?” he cried out. “You might as well ask me to go and stab her. Oh, how can I tell her—how can I!”
He had clasped both hands over his eyes; but, without seeing, he felt the smuggler start beside him, and looked up. Gemma was standing in the doorway.