ear to lose you!
I always knew you were in the world somewhere--and now that I have
found you it is only to give you up! It is too much!"

Cleggett was silent for a moment. When he spoke it was slowly and
gently, but earnestly.

"No point of honor is a barren one, dear," he said. "What the man
lying there may be matters nothing. It is not to him that I have given
my word, but to myself. In our hurried modern life we are not
punctilious enough about these things. Perhaps, in the old days, the
men and women were worse than we in many ways. But they held to a few
traditions, or the best of them did, that make the loose and tawdry
manners of this age seem cheap indeed. All my life I have known that
there was something shining and simple and precious concealed from the
common herd of men in this common age, which the brighter spirits of
the old days lived by and served and worshiped. I have always seen it
plainly, and always tried to live by it, too. Perhaps it was never, in
any period, more than a dream; but I have dreamed that dream. And
anyone who dreams that dream will have a reverence for his spoken word
no matter to whom it is passed. I may be a fool to fight this man;
well then, that is the kind of fool I am! Indeed, I know I am a fool
by the judgments of this age. But I have never truly lived in this
age. I have lived in the past; I have held to the dream; I have
believed in the bright adventure; I have walked with the generous,
chivalric spirits of the great ages; they have come to me out of my
books and dwelt with me and been my companions, and the realities of
time and place have been unreal in their presence. I see myself so
walking always. It may be that I am a vain ass, but I cannot help it.
It may be that I am a little mad; but I would rather be mad with a Don
Quixote than sane with an Andrew Carnegie and pile up platitudes and
dollars.

"And all this foolishness of mine is somehow bound up with the thought
that I have engaged to fight that evil fellow, and must do it; all the
bright, sane madness in me cries out that he is to die by this hand of
mine.

"I have opened my heart to you, as I have never done to anyone before.
And now I put myself into your hands. But, oh, take care--for it is
something in me better than myself that I give you to deal with! And
you can cripple it forever, because I love you and I shall listen to
you. Shall I fight him?"

She had listened, mute and immobil