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The lovely girl has vanished for him for ever and ever, and he is never able to forget her imploring glance, and is tortured by the thought that all the happiness of his life, perhaps, has slipped through his fingers. Hoffmann does not end his story quite in that way; but so it had taken shape, so it had remained, in Gemma's memory.
He had on several occasions performed little services for the Florentine radicals: had lent money to meet an unforeseen emergency, had allowed his business address to be used for the party's letters, etc.; but always through Gemma's mediumship, and as a private friend of hers.
And, my God, what was promised ... what was not promised, by that unknown, unique, impossible, and undubitably certain morrow! He feasted his eyes on Gemma's note.
A crowd had collected about something that was lying on the pavement near their house wall; Olive looked up and saw Gemma's window opened wide, and then she knew what it was. The people made way for her and let her come to where the dead thing lay on its back with the knees drawn up. Some woman had already covered the face with a handkerchief, and dark blood was oozing out from under it.
"You forgive me," he said, "the means I took to defend you?" And turning to Andrea he added slowly: "I declare my wife innocent and my honor satisfied. You swear to stand by my decision?" What Andrea stammered out, what hissing serpents of speech Gemma's clinched teeth bit back, I never knew for my eyes were on Faustina, and her face was a wonder to behold.
She lay dead in the street for hours before they took her away." "Santissimo Dio! Is this true?" "Yes." "Gemma I never knew it " His face was greatly altered now, and he had to moisten his lips before he could speak. "I could have forgiven that," Edna said tremulously after a while. "But not yesterday. Your kisses are too cheap, Filippo." "Oh," he said hoarsely. "So Gemma's cousin saw that too.
If I could bring to His throne, as Your Eminence can, the offering of a holy life of a soul without spot or secret shame " Montanelli turned abruptly away. "I have only one offering to give," he said; "a broken heart." A few days later the Gadfly returned to Florence in the diligence from Pistoja. He went straight to Gemma's lodgings, but she was out.
She went up to her daughter. 'Tell me, please, Gemma... The latter suddenly got up and hugged her. 'Dear mamma, can you wait a little, a tiny bit ... till to-morrow? Can you? And till to-morrow not a word?... Ah!... She burst into sudden happy tears, incomprehensible to herself. This surprised Frau Lenore, the more as the expression of Gemma's face was far from sorrowful, rather joyful in fact.
With strange composure he repeated each detail of his brother's charges: the meetings in the Countess Gemma's drawing-room, the innocent friendliness of the two young people, the talk of mysterious visits to a villa outside the Porta Ticinese, the ever-widening circle of scandal that had spread about their names.
Janet's blood ran faster, she grew excited, absorbed, bolder as she perceived the apologetic attitude of the "scabs" and she began to despise them with Gemma's heartiness; and soon she had lost all sense of surprise at finding herself arguing, pleading, appealing to several women in turn, fluently, in the language of the industrial revolution.