use."

"His cause will be destroyed in any case. It is doomed already. And when
his visionary schemes are in the dust, and all is lost and vain, and
your tears are powerless to bring back the past...."

"But he will be banished, and I shall never see him again."

"It will be the less of two evils, my child," said the Pope. And in the
solemn, vibrating voice that rang in Roma's ears like the voice of
Rossi, he added, "'Whosoever sheds man's blood by man shall his blood be
shed.'"

Again Roma held on to the table, feeling at every moment as if she might
fall with a crash.

"That's what would come to your husband if he were arrested and
condemned for a conspiracy to kill the King. And even if the humane
spirit of the age snatched him from death--what then? A cell in a prison
on a volcanic rock in the sea, a stone sepulchre for the living dead,
buried like a toad in a hole left by the running lava of life, guarded,
watched, tortured in body and soul--a figure of tremendous tragedy, the
hapless man once worshipped by the people spreading impotent hands to
the outer world, until madness comes to his relief and suicide helps him
to escape into eternity and leave only his wasted body on the earth."

Roma could bear the nervous tension no longer. "I'll do it," she said.

"My brave child!" said the Capuchin, turning from the window, with a
face broken up by emotion.

"It is one thing to repeat a secret if it is to harm any one, and quite
another thing if it is to do good, isn't it?" said Roma.

"Indeed it is," said the Capuchin.

"He will never forgive me--I know that quite well. He will never imagine
I would have died rather than do it. But I shall know I have done it for
the best."

"Indeed you will."

Roma's eyes were shining with fresh tears, and she was struggling to
keep back her sobs. "When we parted on the night he went away he said
perhaps we were parting for ever. I promised to be faithful to death
itself, but I was thinking of my own death, not his, and I didn't
imagine that to save his life I must betray his...."

But at that moment she broke down utterly, and the Pope, who had
returned to his seat, rose again to comfort her.

"Calm yourself, my daughter," he said. "What you are going to do is an
act of heroic self-sacrifice. Be brave and Heaven will reward you."

She grew calmer after a while, and then Father Pifferi made arrangements
for the visit to the Procura. He would call for her at ten in the