Page:Cruise of the Jasper B (1916).djvu/139

 which Cleggett had read from the little book. One gathered that it was Giuseppe's favorite poem.

"'I spit upon the whole damned thing!'" he shrilled, and then with a sad shake of his head: "But, as I spit, I weep!"

If the poem was Giuseppe's favorite poem, this was evidently his favorite line, for he said it over and over again—"'But, as I spit, I weep'"—in a breathless babble that was very wearing on the nerves.

But suddenly he interrupted himself; the poems seemed to pass from his mind. "Loge!" he said, raising himself on his elbow and staring, with a frown not at, but through, Cleggett: "Logan—it isn't square!"

There was suffering and perplexity in his gaze; he was evidently living over again some painful scene.

"I'm a revolutionist, Loge, not a crook! I won't do it, Loge!"

Watching him, it was impossible not to understand that the struggle, which his delirium made real and present again, had stamped itself into the texture of his spirit. "You shouldn't ask it, Loge," he said. The crisis of the conflict which he was