ful names. 'Sir,' he said, 'I don't take such names from any
one!' 'You'll take them from me,' I shouted; 'turn the boat round, you
idiot, you hound, you fish!...' I have a terrible temper, a perfect curse
to me. He seemed amazed, even frightened; he sat down again suddenly and
pulled the boat round. I fell on the seat, and hid my face. I believe
the moon came up; there must have been a mist too, for I was cold as
death. In this life, sir, we cannot hide our faces--but by degrees the
pain of wounds grows less. Some will have it that such blows are mortal;
it is not so. Time is merciful.

"In the early morning I went back to London. I had fever on me--and was
delirious. I dare say I should have killed myself if I had not been so
used to weapons--they and I were too old friends, I suppose--I can't
explain. It was a long while before I was up and about. Dalton nursed me
through it; his great heavy moustache had grown quite white. We never
mentioned her; what was the good? There were things to settle of course,
the lawyer--this was unspeakably distasteful to me. I told him it was to
be as she wished, but the fellow would come to me, with his--there, I
don't want to be unkind. I wished him to say it was my fault, but he
said--I remember his smile now--he said, that was impossible, would be
seen through, talked of collusion--I don't understand these things, and
what's more, I can't bear them, they are--dirty.

"Two years later, when I had come back to London, after the Russo-Turkish
war, I received a letter from her. I have it here." He took an old,
yellow sheet of paper out of a leathern pockethook, spread it in his
fingers, and sat staring at it. For some minutes he did not speak.

"In the autumn of that same year she died in childbirth. He had deserted
her. Fortunately for him, he was killed on the Indian frontier, that
very year. If she had lived she would have been thirty-two next June;
not a great age.... I know I am what they call a crank; doctors will
tell you that you can't be cured of a bad illness, and be the same man
again. If you are bent, to force yourself straight must leave you weak
in another place. I must and will think well of women--everything done,
and everything said against them is a stone on her dead body. Could you
sit, and listen to it?" As though driven by his own question, he rose,
and paced up and down. He came back to the seat at last.

"That, sir, is the reason of my beh