pened the door, making his way out into the night.
But she did not see him, for her burning face was hidden in her
hands.

Drunk as though drugged, the echoes of passion still stirred his
darker self, and his whirling thoughts pierced his heart like
names, whispering, urging him to go back and complete the
destruction he had begun--take her once more into his arms and keep
her there through life, through death, till the bones of the
blessed and the damned alike stirred in their graves at the last
reveille.

To know that she, too, had been fighting herself--that she, too,
feared passion, stirred every brutal fibre in him to a fiercer
recklessness that halted him in his tracks under the calm stars.
But what held him there was something else, perhaps what he
believed had died in him; for he did not even turn again. And at
last, through the dark and throbbing silence he moved on again at
random, jaws set.

The mental strain was beginning to distort everything. Once or
twice he laughed all to himself, nodding mysteriously, his tense
white face stamped with a ghastly grimace of self-contempt. Then
an infernal, mocking curiosity stirred him:

What kind of a thing _was_ he anyway? A moment since he had loosed
the brute in himself, leaving it to her to re-chain or let it carry
her with him to destruction. And yet he was too fastidious to
marry her under false pretences!

"Gods of Laughter! What in hell--what sort of thing am I?" he
asked aloud, and lurched on, muttering insanely to himself,
laughing, talking under his breath, hearing nothing, seeing nothing
but her wistful eyes, gazing sorrowfully out of the night.

At a dark crossing he ran blindly into a moving horse; was pushed
aside by its cloaked rider with a curse; stood dazed, while his
senses slowly returned--first, hearing--and his ears were filled
with the hollow trample of many horses; then vision, and in the
dark street before him he saw the column of shadowy horsemen riding
slowly in fours, knee to knee, starlight sparkling on spur and bit
and sabre guard.

Officers walked their lean horses beside the column. One among
them drew bridle near him, calling out:

"Have you the right time?"

Berkley looked at his watch.

"Midnight."

"Thank you, friend."

Berkley stepped to the curb-stone: "What regiment is that?"

"Eighth New York."

"Leaving?"

"Going into camp. Yorkville."

Berkley said: "Do you want a damned fool?"

"The companies a