was no more
happy than I was in his presence. My poor husband would sit pale and
listless, listening to the endless raving upon politics and upon social
questions which made up or visitor's conversation. Gennaro said
nothing, but I, who knew him so well, could read in his face some
emotion which I had never seen there before. At first I thought that
it was dislike. And then, gradually, I understood that it was more
than dislike. It was fear--a deep, secret, shrinking fear. That
night--the night that I read his terror--I put my arms round him and I
implored him by his love for me and by all that he held dear to hold
nothing from me, and to tell me why this huge man overshadowed him so.

"He told me, and my own heart grew cold as ice as I listened. My poor
Gennaro, in his wild and fiery days, when all the world seemed against
him and his mind was driven half mad by the injustices of life, had
joined a Neapolitan society, the Red Circle, which was allied to the
old Carbonari. The oaths and secrets of this brotherhood were
frightful, but once within its rule no escape was possible. When we
had fled to America Gennaro thought that he had cast it all off
forever. What was his horror one evening to meet in the streets the
very man who had initiated him in Naples, the giant Gorgiano, a man who
had earned the name of 'Death' in the south of Italy, for he was red to
the elbow in murder! He had come to New York to avoid the Italian
police, and he had already planted a branch of this dreadful society in
his new home. All this Gennaro told me and showed me a summons which
he had received that very day, a Red Circle drawn upon the head of it
telling him that a lodge would be held upon a certain date, and that
his presence at it was required and ordered.

"That was bad enough, but worse was to come. I had noticed for some
time that when Gorgiano came to us, as he constantly did, in the
evening, he spoke much to me; and even when his words were to my
husband those terrible, glaring, wild-beast eyes of his were always
turned upon me. One night his secret came out. I had awakened what he
called 'love' within him--the love of a brute--a savage. Gennaro had
not yet returned when he came. He pushed his way in, seized me in his
mighty arms, hugged me in his bear's embrace, covered me with kisses,
and implored me to come away with him. I was struggling and screaming
when Gennaro entered and attacked him. He struck Gennaro s