I stared at the lines in a fever of distraction. At the very moment when the cup was at my lips, it was to be dashed away. Just when I had fed my passion, and had been goaded by the remembrance of the man's foul acts and insults to a vow of implacable vengeance, I was to do nothing.
I could not grant the wish. The man deserved to die, and die he should if my arm were strong enough. I could not, I would not, let him escape me. He had forced the quarrel, and it must go through. It was a just cause, and I was in the right throughout; and I crushed the paper in my clenched hand and vowed the request was impossible.
Yet how could I face her afterwards and say, "I had your plea and would not hearken to it!" Was ever man more plagued? I paced up and down the turf fighting the fight between my thirst for vengeance and my love for Christina with its desire to grant her wish; and never had I fought a harder battle.
My love won, of course. I had no motives in life but those which were inspired by my love for her; and the thought of myself, appearing red-handed before her, and of her turning from me in abhorrence, or gazing at me with eyes of reproach to bid me never see her again since I cared so little as not to grant her wishes, was unbearable. But it was hard, cruelly hard; and I could have ground my teeth in the stress of my keen disappointment.
I questioned Spernow as we rode together, and he told me that Mademoiselle Broumoff had given him the letter, and that it was to be destroyed as soon as read.
I tore it to shreds and scattered them on the passing wind, with a smile half bitterness, half love; though
