't know
how. All has been mere impulse--so far. No, I don't know how to analyze
it all."

"I do," said the Tracer.

Burke raised his level, unbelieving eyes.

"You are in love," said the Tracer.

After a long time Burke looked up again. "Do you think so?"

"Yes. Can I help you?" asked the Tracer pleasantly.

The young man sat silent, frowning into space; then:

"I tell you plainly enough that I have come here to argue with two men
at the end of a pistol; and--you tell me I'm in love. By what logic--"

"It is written in your face, Mr. Burke--in your eyes, in every feature,
every muscle's contraction, every modulation of your voice. My tables,
containing six hundred classified superficial phenomena peculiar to all
human emotions, have been compiled and scientifically arranged according
to Bertillon's system. It is an absolutely accurate key to every phase
of human emotion, from hate, through all its amazingly paradoxical
phenomena, to love, with all its genera under the suborder--all its
species, subspecies, and varieties."

He leaned back, surveying the young man with kindly amusement.

"You talk of pistol range, but you are thinking of something more fatal
than bullets, Mr. Burke. You are thinking of love--of the first, great,
absorbing, unreasoning passion that has ever shaken you, blinded you,
seized you and dragged you out of the ordered path of life, to push you
violently into the strange and unexplored! That is what stares out on
the world through those haunted eyes of yours, when the smile dies out
and you are off your guard; that is what is hardening those flat, clean
bands of muscle in jaw and cheek; that is what those hints of shadow
mean beneath the eye, that new and delicate pinch to the nostril, that
refining, almost to sharpness, of the nose, that sensitive edging to the
lips, and the lean delicacy of the chin."

He bent slightly forward in his chair.

"There is all that there, Mr. Burke, and something else--the glimmering
dawn of desperation."

"Yes," said the other, "that is there. I am desperate."

"_Ex_actly. Also you wear two revolvers in a light, leather harness
strapped up under your armpits," said the Tracer, laughing. "Take them
off, Mr. Burke. There is nothing to be gained in shooting up Mr. Smiles
or converting Mr. Gandon into nitrates."

"If it is a matter where one man can help another," the Tracer added
simply, "it would give me pleasure to place my resources at your
command