am a liar, I do not break my word of honor. I am a renegade,
but I am still an English officer! You have caught that distinction."

"Yes, I would trust you," I said, "if you gave me your word of honor."

He turned full upon me. "By Jove, old chap," he said, with a queer note
in his voice, "you touch me awfully close. You're like men of my own
family--you stir something in me that I used to know. The word of a
fighting man--that's the same for yours and mine; and that's why I've
always admired you. That's the sort of man that wins with the best sort
of women."

"You were not worth the best sort of woman," I said to him. "You had no
chance with Ellen Meriwether."

"No, but at least every fellow is worth his own fight with himself. I
wanted to be a gentleman once more. Oh, a man may mate with a woman of
any color--he does, all over the world. He may find a mistress in any
nationality of his own color, or a wife in any class similar to his
own--he does, all over the world. But a sweetheart, and a wife, and a
woman--when a fellow even like myself finds himself honestly gone like
that--when he begins to fight inside himself, old India against old
England, renegade against gentleman--say, that's awfully bitter--when he
sees the other fellow win. You won--"

"No," said I, "I did not win. You know that perfectly well. There is no
way in the world that I can win. All I can do is to keep parole--well,
with myself, I suppose."

"You touch me awfully close," he mused again. "You play big and fair.
You're a fighting man and a gentleman and--excuse me, but it's true--an
awful ass all in one. You're such an ass I almost hesitate to play the
game with you."

"Thank you," said I. "But now take a very stupid fellow's advice. Leave
this country, and don't be seen about here again, for if so, you will be
killed."

"Precisely," he admitted. "In fact, I was just intending to arrange a
permanent departure. That was why I was asking you to promise me to--in
short, to keep your own promise. There's going to be war next spring.
The dreams of this strange new man Lincoln, out in the West, are going
to come true--there will be catastrophies here. That is why I am here.
War, one of the great games, is something that one must sometimes cross
the globe to play. I will be here to have a hand in this one."

"You have had much of a hand in it already," I hazarded. He smiled
frankly.

"Yes," he said, "one must live. I admit I have been what yo