certainly
for his eye-glasses. For an instant he, too, was back in the long-ago
past, when he and Valiant had been comrades. What a long panorama
unfolded at the name; the times when they had been boys fly-fishing in
the Rapidan and fox-hunting about Pilot-Knob with the yelping
hounds--crisp winters of books and pipes together at the old university
at Charlottesville--later maturer years about Damory Court when the
trail of sex had deepened into man's passion and the devil's rivalry. It
had been a curious three-sided affair--he, and Valiant, and Sassoon.
Sassoon with his dissipated flair and ungovernable temper and strange
fits of recklessness; clean, high-idealed, straight-away Valiant; and
he--a Bristow, neither better nor worse than the rest of his name. He
remembered that mad strained season when he had grimly recognized his
own cause as hopeless, and with burning eyes had watched Sassoon and
Valiant racing abreast. He remembered that glittering prodigal dance
when he had come upon Valiant and Judith standing in the shrubbery, the
candle-light from some open door engoldening their faces: hers smiling,
a little flippant perhaps, and conscious of her spell; his grave and
earnest, yet wistful.

"You promise, John?"

"I give my sacred word. Whatever the provocation, I will not lift my
hand against him. Never, never!" Then the same voice, vibrant,
appealing. "Judith! It isn't because--because--you care for him?"

He had plunged away in the darkness before her answer came. What had it
mattered then to him what she had replied? And that very night had
befallen the fatal quarrel!

The major started. How that name had blown away the dust! "That's a long
time ago, Judith."

"Think of it! I wore my hair just as Shirley does now. It was the same
color, with the same fascinating little lights and whorls in it." She
turned toward him, but he sat rigidly upright, his gaze avoiding hers.
Her dreamy look was gone now, and her eyes were very bright.

"Thirty years ago to-morrow they fought," she said softly, "Valiant and
Sassoon. Every woman has her one anniversary, I suppose, and to-morrow's
mine. Do you know what I do, every fourteenth of May, Monty? I keep my
room and spend the day always the same way. There's a little book I
read. And there's an old haircloth trunk that I've had since I was a
girl. Down in the bottom of it are some--things, that I take out and set
round the room ... and there is a handful of old letters I