It was as if they had spoken of an illness, a chill, that he had contracted, and that could quite easily be cured.
“You came home to be our ruin,” she said, sternly.
“As you will; as you will,” he said, complying. “You can call it so. As everything is going now, you are certainly right to call it so. Ah, if they had not given me false information; if I had not come a week too late! Is it not like us Sicilians to let the government anticipate us? When I came the leaders were already arrested, the island garrisoned with forty thousand men. Everything lost!”
It sounded strangely blank when he said that “everything lost.” And for that which never could be anything, he had lost happiness. His opinions and principles seemed to him now to be dry cobwebs, which had captured him. He wished to tear himself away to come to her. She was the only reality, the only thing that was his. So he had felt before. It came back now. She was the only thing in the world.
“They are, however, fighting to-day in Paternó.”
“There has been a disagreement by the town-gate,” he said. “It is nothing. If I had been able to inflame all Etna, the whole circle of towns round about Etna! Then they would have understood us! they would have listened to us! Now they are shooting down a few hungry peasants to make a few hungry mouths the less. They do not yield an inch to us.”
He strove to break through his cobwebs. Could he venture to go up to her, to tell her that all that was of no importance? He did not need to think of politics. He was an artist; he was free! And he wanted to possess her!
Suddenly it seemed as if the air trembled. A shot echoed through the night, then another and another.
She came forward to him and grasped his wrist. “Is that the uprising?” she asked.
Shot upon shot came thundering. Then were heard the cries and din of a crowd rushing down the street.
“It is the uprising; it must be the uprising! Ah, long live socialism!”
He was filled with joy. Entire faith in his belief came back to him. He would win her too. Women have never refused to belong to the victor.
They both hurried without another word through the garden to the door. There Gaetano began to swear and call. He could not get out. There was no key in the lock. He was shut into the garden.