itter. It
was her triumph, too. She believed in the divine inspiration of the man
who sat in the chair of Washington and Jefferson. Great God, could
madness reach sublimer folly! She had written him a letter of good
wishes and all but asked for a reconciliation before the battle. Love
had fought with pride through a night and pride had won. He hadn't
answered the letter.

He avoided his newspaper friends and plunged into a round of
dissipation. Beneath the grim tragedy of blood in Washington flowed the
ever widening and deepening torrent of sensual revelry--of wine and
women, song and dance, gambling and intrigue.

The flash of something cruel in his eye which Betty Winter had seen and
feared from the first burned now with a steady blaze. For six days and
nights he played in Joe Hall's place a desperate game, drinking,
drinking always, and winning. Hour after hour he sat at the roulette
table, his chin sunk on his breast, his reddened eyes gleaming beneath
his heavy black brows, silent, surly, unapproachable.

A reporter from the _Republican_ recognized him and extended his hand:

"Hello, Vaughan!"

John stared at him coldly and resumed his play without a word. At the
end of six days he had won more than two thousand dollars from the
house, put it in his pocket, and, deaf to the blandishments of smooth,
gentlemanly proprietor, pushed his way out into the Avenue.

It was but four o'clock in the afternoon and he was only half drunk. He
wandered aimlessly down the street and crossed in the direction of
hell's half-acre below the Baltimore depot. His uniform was wrinkled,
his boots had not been blacked for a week, his linen was dirty, his hair
rumpled, his handsome black moustache stained with drink, but he was
hilariously conscious that he had two thousand dollars of Joe Hall's
ill-gotten money in his pocket. There was a devil-may-care swing to his
walk and a look in his eye that no decent woman would care to see twice.

He ran squarely into Betty Winter in the crowd emerging from the depot.
The little bag she was carrying fell from her hands, with a cry of
startled anguish:

"John--my God!"

He made no effort to pick up the fallen bag or in any way return the
greeting. He merely paused and stared--deliberately stood and stared as
if stupefied by the apparition. In fact, he was so startled by her
sudden appearance that for a moment he felt the terror of a drunkard's
first hallucination. The thought was momentary