am very sorry for you,
Arthur; but I daren't show it; He would be angry.' And I looked at Him,
and the wooden image was laughing.

"Then, when I came to my senses, and saw the barrack and the coolies
with their leprosy, I understood. I saw that you care more to curry
favour with that devilish God of yours than to save me from any hell.
And I have remembered that. I forgot just now when you touched me;
I--have been ill, and I used to love you once. But there can be nothing
between us but war, and war, and war. What do you want to hold my hand
for? Can't you see that while you believe in your Jesus we can't be
anything but enemies?"

Montanelli bent his head and kissed the mutilated hand.

"Arthur, how can I help believing in Him? If I have kept my faith
through all these frightful years, how can I ever doubt Him any more,
now that He has given you back to me? Remember, I thought I had killed
you."

"You have that still to do."

"Arthur!" It was a cry of actual terror; but the Gadfly went on,
unheeding:

"Let us be honest, whatever we do, and not shilly-shally. You and I
stand on two sides of a pit, and it's hopeless trying to join hands
across it. If you have decided that you can't, or won't, give up that
thing"--he glanced again at the crucifix on the wall--"you must consent
to what the colonel----"

"Consent! My God--consent--Arthur, but I love you!"

The Gadfly's face contracted fearfully.

"Which do you love best, me or that thing?"

Montanelli slowly rose. The very soul in him withered with dread, and
he seemed to shrivel up bodily, and to grow feeble, and old, and wilted,
like a leaf that the frost has touched. He had awaked out of his dream,
and the outer darkness was staring in upon an empty place.

"Arthur, have just a little mercy on me----"

"How much had you for me when your lies drove me out to be slave to
the blacks on the sugar-plantations? You shudder at that--ah, these
tender-hearted saints! This is the man after God's own heart--the man
that repents of his sin and lives. No one dies but his son. You say you
love me,--your love has cost me dear enough! Do you think I can blot out
everything, and turn back into Arthur at a few soft words--I, that have
been dish-washer in filthy half-caste brothels and stable-boy to Creole
farmers that were worse brutes than their own cattle? I, that have
been zany in cap and bells for a strolling variety show--drudge and
Jack-of-all-trades to the matadors