But the Gadfly was difficult to convince, and the discussion went on and on without coming nearer to any settlement

"You will see if you think about the thing calmly for a minute. It is only five weeks since you got back; the police are on the scent about that pilgrim business, and scouring the country to find a clue. Yes, I know you are clever at disguises; but remember what a lot of people saw you, both as Diego and as the countryman; and you can't disguise your lameness or the scar on your face."
"There are p-plenty of lame people in the world."
"Yes, but there are not plenty of people in the Romagna with a lame foot and a sabre-cut across the cheek and a left arm injured like yours, and the combination of blue eyes with such dark colouring."
"The eyes don't matter; I can alter them with belladonna."
"You can't alter the other things. No, it won't do. For you to go there just now, with all your identification-marks, would be to walk into a trap with your eyes open. You would certainly be taken."
"But s-s-someone must help Domenichino."
"It will be no help to him to have you caught at a critical moment like this. Your arrest would mean the failure of the whole thing."
But the Gadfly was difficult to convince, and the discussion went on and on without coming nearer to any settlement. Gemma was beginning to realize how nearly inexhaustible was the fund of quiet obstinacy in his character; and, had the matter not been one about which she felt strongly, she would probably have yielded for the sake of peace. This, however, was a case in which she could not conscientiously give way; the practical advantage to be gained from the proposed journey seemed to her not sufficiently important to be worth the risk, and she could not help suspecting that his desire to go was prompted less by a conviction of grave political necessity than by a morbid craving for the excitement of danger. He had got into the habit of risking his neck, and his tendency to run into unnecessary peril seemed to her a form of intemperance which should be quietly but steadily resisted. Finding all her arguments unavailing against his dogged resolve to go his own way, she fired her last shot.
"Let us be honest about it, anyway," she said; "and call things by their true names. It is not Domenichino's difficulty that makes you so determined to go. It is your own personal passion for----"
"It's not true!" he interrupted vehemently. "He is nothing to me; I don't care if I never see him again."
He broke off, seeing in her face that he had betrayed himself. Their eyes met for an instant, and dropped; and neither of them uttered the name that was in both their minds.
"It--it is not Domenichino I want to save," he stammered at last, with his face half buried in the cat's fur; "it is that I--I understand the danger of the work failing if he has no help."
She passed over the feeble little subterfuge, and went on as if there had been no interruption:
"It is your passion for running into danger which makes you want to go there. You have the same craving for danger when you are worried that you had for opium when you were ill."
"It was not I that asked for the opium," he said defiantly; "it was the others who insisted on giving it to me."