The man to whom he spoke put out his hand with a sudden gesture. “Wait,” he said.
What need of time? Would a day, a week, make him more able? Through the turmoil of new emotions he reasoned swiftly.
There were two to consider: the woman he loved, whose singing voice he heard, and Ada, his child. If for Teresa’s happiness he put aside this call, what then? A continuance of life in this fond refuge he had found here in Italy—in time, peace and quiet, perhaps. But a happiness cankered for them both by the recollection of what he might have done, but would not. And for Ada? The knowledge that he had once failed a supreme cause.
The song rose again. Pietro Gamba’s face turned suddenly tender.
“Oh! thou, my sad and solitary Pillow!
Send me kind dreams to keep my heart from breaking.
In return for the tears I shed upon thee waking;
Let me not die till he comes back o’er the billow!”
If he went—and did not return.
To die worthily, for a great cause—though he be but one of the many waves that break upon the shore before the tide can reach its mark. To forward the splendid march of freedom against the barbarian. To lead Greece toward its promised land, even though he himself be, like Moses, destined to see it but afar off. The world could sneer or praise, as it chose. It might attribute to him the highest motives or the most vainglorious. Sometime it would understand. It would have his Memoirs, his final bequest to Ada.