Hagar came to his feet. "You have trusted me," he said, "and I will honor
your confidence. To the world the story I tell on this canvas shall be my
own."

"I like to try and believe," she said, "that there are good men in the
world. But I have not done so these many years. Who would think that of
me?--I who sing merry songs, and have danced and am gay--how well we wear
the mask, some of us!"

"I am sure," he said, "that there are better days coming for you. On my
soul I think it."

"But he is here," she said. "What for? I cannot think there will be
anything but misery when he crosses my path."

"That duel," he rejoined, the instinct of fairness natural to an honorable
man roused in him; "did you ever hear more than one side of it?"

"No; yet sometimes I have thought there might be more than one side.
Fairfax Detlor was a coward; and whatever that other was,"--she nodded to
the picture--"he feared no man."

"A minute!" he said "Let me make a sketch of it."

He got to work immediately. After the first strong outlines she rose, came
to him and said, "You know as much of it as I do--I will not stay any
longer."

He caught her fingers in his and held them for an instant. "It is brutal
of me. I did not stop to think what all this might cost you."