'And Italia?'
Dino half smiled. 'Well too. She sent me a message for you. She wanted you to know she never would believe you had meant to hurt anybody. You don't mind my telling you, Valdez? She meant only what was kindest.'
'Ay. She's a good girl that; a good girl. And when are you going back to them all, my boy,' he asked suddenly, fixing his companion with his piercing glance.
Dino flushed red. 'I shall stay and see you through it. Valdez, that is little enough to do for you. You don't think I would leave you till I see you free?'
'Nay, lad,' said the old man very gently, 'you'll let me have my own way i' this matter, I know. I've seen you; and you know I'm pretty safe as it is. Unless things take a bad turn for that young Gasparo, they can't do much worse to me than shut me up in prison for a bit. And that's nothing.'
He started up to his feet, and began pacing backwards and forwards between the four walls of the narrow cell.
'The plan's miscarried. It may have been a good one or a bad one, but we know where the orders came from, and it wasn't our place to judge of that. And I don't judge of it. I've chosen my place in life, and I'll abide by it to the end. When a man has meant anything strongly there's never any real going back again for him. It isn't the failure or the success, it's the purpose, the will that is in him, that makes the difference.'
He stopped, leaning against the wall beneath the grated window.
'What is the whole teaching of daily life, my Dino, if it is not to accept the material success—le fait accompli—as if it were a very law from heaven? Not to do that, they tell us, is to be a fool or a madman; it is to shut one's eyes against evidence, and one's ears against common-sense; to wear out friendship and to forfeit sympathy. That's the lesson you may learn at any street corner, and, if you listen, you will hear it cried out in the wilderness. It's what your old fisher friend, how do you call him? old Andrea, has preached to you. 'Tis the Alpha and Omega of many a good man's philosophy. But I,' the old socialist drew himself up, and his eyes flashed fire, 'I think otherwise. To me, half the time, material success, and what society teaches, and what poverty enjoins, are but the negation of every high ideal, of every disinterested protest against injustice, of every struggle against social tyranny and bitter social wrong. That's my creed, lad. That's my creed, and, good or bad, I'll never turn my back upon it. No! not if I had to spend every hour of my existence here!'
'I wish to God that I could do more than merely understand you, I wish to God that I were capable of feeling with you, believing with you, Valdez.'