“Then do you believe,” she interrupted, coming nearer to him with clasped hands, “that if he were not drowned,--if he had been through your experience instead,--he would never come back and let the past go? Do you believe he would NEVER forget? Remember, it has cost me something, too. Look!” She pushed back the heavy waves of hair from her forehead. Through the black locks ran a broad white streak. There was a long silence. “I think,” the Gadfly said slowly, “that the dead are better dead. Forgetting some things is a difficult matter. And if I were in the place of your dead friend, I would s-s-stay dead. The REVENANT is an ugly spectre.” She put the portrait back into its drawer and locked the desk. “That is hard doctrine,” she said. “And now we will talk about something else.” “I came to have a little business talk with you, if I may--a private one, about a plan that I have in my head.” She drew a chair to the table and sat down. “What do you think of the projected press-law?” he began, without a trace of his usual stammer. “What I think of it? I think it will not be of much value, but half a loaf is better than no bread.” “Undoubtedly. Then do you intend to work on one of the new papers these good folk here are preparing to start?” “I thought of doing so. There is always a great deal of practical work to be done in starting any paper--printing and circulation arrangements and----” “How long are you going to waste your mental gifts in that fashion?” “Why 'waste'?” “Because it is waste. You know quite well that you have a far better head than most of the men you are working with, and you let them make a regular drudge and Johannes factotum of you. Intellectually you are as far ahead of Grassini and Galli as if they were schoolboys; yet you sit correcting their proofs like a printer's devil.” “In the first place, I don't spend all my time in correcting proofs; and moreover it seems to me that you exaggerate my mental capacities. They are by no means so brilliant as you think.” “I don't think them brilliant at all,” he answered quietly; “but I do think them sound and solid, which is of much more importance. At those dreary committee meetings it is always you who put your finger on the weak spot in everybody's logic.” “You are not fair to the others. Martini, for instance, has a very logical head, and there is no doubt about the capacities of Fabrizi and Lega. Then Grassini has a sounder knowledge of Italian economic statistics than any official in the country, perhaps.” “Well, that's not saying much; but let us lay them and their capacities aside. The fact remains that you, with such gifts as you possess, might do more important work and fill a more responsible post than at present.” “I am quite satisfied with my position. The work I am doing is not of very much value, perhaps, but we all do what we can.”