tale of bulls-eyes, and broken pipe-stems at a Paris fair. What do I
care for your brother's tricks. Let him see my score cards at West
Point. He'll find them framed on the walls. I was first a coward and a
cad, and now I am a bully and a hired assassin. From the first, you
and your brother have laughed at me and mine while all I asked of you
was to be what you seemed to be, what I was happy to think you were. I
wanted to believe in you. Why did you show me that you can be selfish
and unfeeling? It is you who do not understand. You understand so
little," I cried, "that I pity you from the bottom of my heart. I give
you my word, I pity you."

"Stop," she commanded. I drew back and bowed, and we stood confronting
each other in silence.

"And they call you a brave man," she said at last, speaking slowly and
steadily, as though she were picking each word. "It is like a brave
man to insult a woman, because she wants to save her brother's life."

When I raised my face it was burning, as though she had thrown
vitriol.

"If I have insulted you, Miss Fiske," I said, "if I have ever insulted
any woman, I hope to God that to-morrow morning your brother will kill
me."

When I turned and looked back at her from the door, she was leaning
against one of the pillars with her face bent in her hands, and
weeping bitterly.

I rode to the barracks and spent several hours in writing a long