"He came again and again. Yet I was aware that Gennaro 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,