nt to pat me on the
head for s-s-smuggling firearms onto its territory. It's only natural
that they should hit as hard as they can. As for what sort of man I am,
you have had a romantic confession of my sins once. Is not that enough;
or w-w-would you like me to begin again?"

"I don't understand you," Montanelli said coldly, taking up a pencil and
twisting it between his fingers.

"Surely Your Eminence has not forgotten old Diego, the pilgrim?"
He suddenly changed his voice and began to speak as Diego: "I am a
miserable sinner------"

The pencil snapped in Montanelli's hand. "That is too much!" he said.

The Gadfly leaned his head back with a soft little laugh, and sat
watching while the Cardinal paced silently up and down the room.

"Signor Rivarez," said Montanelli, stopping at last in front of him,
"you have done a thing to me that a man who was born of a woman should
hesitate to do to his worst enemy. You have stolen in upon my private
grief and have made for yourself a mock and a jest out of the sorrow
of a fellow-man. I once more beg you to tell me: Have I ever done you
wrong? And if not, why have you played this heartless trick on me?"

The Gadfly, leaning back against the chair-cushions, looked up with his
subtle, chilling, inscrutable smile.

"It am-m-mused me, Your Eminence; you took it all so much to heart, and
it rem-m-minded me--a little bit--of a variety show----"

Montanelli, white to the very lips, turned away and rang the bell.

"You can take back the prisoner," he said when the guards came in.

After they had gone he sat down at the table, still trembling with
unaccustomed indignation, and took up a pile of reports which had been
sent in to him by the parish priests of his diocese.

Presently he pushed them away, and, leaning on the table, hid his face
in both hands. The Gadfly seemed to have left some terrible shadow of
himself, some ghostly trail of his personality, to haunt the room; and
Montanelli sat trembling and cowering, not daring to look up lest he
should see the phantom presence that he knew was not there. The spectre
hardly amounted to a hallucination. It was a mere fancy of overwrought
nerves; but he was seized with an unutterable dread of its shadowy
presence--of the wounded hand, the smiling, cruel mouth, the mysterious
eyes, like deep sea water----

He shook off the fancy and settled to his work. All day long he had
scarcely a free moment, and the thing did not trouble him;