“I have been thinking,” he said. “You are quite right; it is an ugly tangle I have got my life into. But remember, a man does not meet every day a woman whom he can--love; and I--I have been in deep waters. I am afraid----” “Afraid----” “Of the dark. Sometimes I DARE not be alone at night. I must have something living--something solid beside me. It is the outer darkness, where shall be---- No, no! It's not that; that's a sixpenny toy hell;--it's the INNER darkness. There's no weeping or gnashing of teeth there; only silence--silence----” His eyes dilated. She was quite still, hardly breathing till he spoke again. “This is all mystification to you, isn't it? You can't understand--luckily for you. What I mean is that I have a pretty fair chance of going mad if I try to live quite alone---- Don't think too hardly of me, if you can help it; I am not altogether the vicious brute you perhaps imagine me to be.” “I cannot try to judge for you,” she answered. “I have not suffered as you have. But--I have been in rather deep water too, in another way; and I think--I am sure--that if you let the fear of anything drive you to do a really cruel or unjust or ungenerous thing, you will regret it afterwards. For the rest--if you have failed in this one thing, I know that I, in your place, should have failed altogether,--should have cursed God and died.” He still kept her hands in his. “Tell me,” he said very softly; “have you ever in your life done a really cruel thing?” She did not answer, but her head sank down, and two great tears fell on his hand. “Tell me!” he whispered passionately, clasping her hands tighter. “Tell me! I have told you all my misery.” “Yes,--once,--long ago. And I did it to the person I loved best in the world.” The hands that clasped hers were trembling violently; but they did not loosen their hold. “He was a comrade,” she went on; “and I believed a slander against him,--a common glaring lie that the police had invented. I struck him in the face for a traitor; and he went away and drowned himself. Then, two days later, I found out that he had been quite innocent. Perhaps that is a worse memory than any of yours. I would cut off my right hand to undo what it has done.” Something swift and dangerous--something that she had not seen before,--flashed into his eyes. He bent his head down with a furtive, sudden gesture and kissed the hand. She drew back with a startled face. “Don't!” she cried out piteously. “Please don't ever do that again! You hurt me!” “Do you think you didn't hurt the man you killed?” “The man I--killed---- Ah, there is Cesare at the gate at last! I--I must go!” ***** When Martini came into the room he found the Gadfly lying alone with the untouched coffee beside him, swearing softly to himself in a languid, spiritless way, as though he got no satisfaction out of it. CHAPTER IX.