There was no difficulty in arranging for that journey to Pisa. As soon as it was settled that they were to go by water, to row themselves the fifteen miles of the old disused canal, Dino volunteered to have the skiff in readiness at a moment's notice. 'I want to be away from here. The sooner we start, the sooner it's all over, the better pleased I shall be,' the young man insisted impatiently.
Ever since his return from Monte Nero he had done nothing but urge upon Valdez the necessity of some immediate action; if it were only to go on this trip to the next town to secure the purchase of the revolver, at least that would be something accomplished. A curious restless gloom had fallen upon Dino's open countenance. It was as if he could never quite free himself from the scathing bitterness of old Andrea's reproaches. He longed for action, definite action, however distasteful. Each slow bright day which passed seemed a long space of painful suspense until he stood cleared in the old fisherman's eyes. 'He may think me a madman if he pleases. He can never think of me again as a coward,' the young man told himself bitterly. Valdez could understand nothing of this sudden change in him.
'You puzzle me, lad—and you lack patience.'
'Patience!' repeated Dino, 'and what for pray? I have read in some book that it is faith, and not prudence, which has power to move mountains. What does anything else matter so long as we have the faith?'
Valdez looked at him very gravely.
'You are sneering, my Dino. And I find that, as a rule, people who distrust or deny their own emotions are justified by many of their subsequent actions in the lack of faith. Don't do it, boy. Not to believe in others,'—the old republican's eye flashed,—'not to trust in others, is to reduce life to a mean habit,' he said.
They were sitting in Dino's own room, and the young man's gaze wandered restlessly over the walls; it seemed as if he were trying to learn by heart the position of each small familiar object.
'Why, it is like a bit of the old days back again, Valdez, to hear you lecture one!'
'Ay, lad.'
The elder man was following out his own train of thought. 'Perhaps I ought not to be so much surprised at the way it is taking hold of you. Until one is two or three and twenty one thinks of oneself: after that one is preoccupied with life, its combinations and its issues. And life is the bigger thing of the two.'