aded pistol in a drawer waiting for your word. It's--it's
idiotic; I shall be an object of--of--derision."

"Absurd?--idiotic? Do you think so?" queried General D'Hubert with sly
gravity. "Perhaps. But I don't see how that can be helped. However, I
am not likely to talk at large of this adventure. Nobody need ever know
anything about it. Just as no one to this day, I believe, knows the
origin of our quarrel. . . . Not a word more," he added, hastily.
"I can't really discuss this question with a man who, as far as I am
concerned, does not exist."

When the two duellists came out into the open, General Feraud walking a
little behind, and rather with the air of walking in a trance, the two
seconds hurried towards them, each from his station at the edge of the
wood. General D'Hubert addressed them, speaking loud and distinctly,
"Messieurs, I make it a point of declaring to you solemnly, in the
presence of General Feraud, that our difference is at last settled for
good. You may inform all the world of that fact."

"A reconciliation, after all!" they exclaimed together.

"Reconciliation? Not that exactly. It is something much more binding. Is
it not so, General?"

General Feraud only lowered his head in sign of assent. The two veterans
looked at each other. Later in the day, when they found themselves alone
out of their moody friend's earshot, the cuirassier remarked suddenly,
"Generally speaking, I can see with my one eye as far as most people;
but this beats me. He won't say anything."

"In this affair of honour I understand there has been from first to last
always something that no one in the army could quite make out," declared
the chasseur with the imperfect nose. "In mystery it began, in mystery
it went on, in mystery it is to end, apparently."

General D'Hubert walked home with long, hasty strides, by no means
uplifted by a sense of triumph. He had conquered, yet it did not seem
to him that he had gained very much by his conquest. The night before
he had grudged the risk of his life which appeared to him magnificent,
worthy of preservation as an opportunity to win a girl's love. He had
known moments when, by a marvellous illusion, this love seemed to
be already his, and his threatened life a still more magnificent
opportunity of devotion. Now that his life was safe it had suddenly lost
its special magnificence. It had acquired instead a specially alarming
aspect as a snare for the exposure of unworthiness. As to