“Good.  Her choice was sure to be a worthy one, and that was enough for me.  You need not doubt that I kept my secret then more sacredly than ever.  I returned to India, and tried to die.  I dared not kill myself, for I was a soldier and a Christian, and belonged to God and my Queen.  The Sikhs would not kill me, do what I would to help them.  Then I threw myself into science, that I might stifle passion; and I stifled it.  I fancied myself cured, and I was cured; and I returned to England again.  I loved your brother for her sake; I loved you at first for her sake, then for your own.  But I presumed upon my cure; I accepted your brother’s invitation; I caught at the opportunity of seeing her again—­ happy—­as I fancied; and of proving to myself my own soundness.  I considered myself a sort of Melchisedek, neither young nor old, without passions, without purpose on earth—­a fakeer who had licence to do and to dare what others might not.  But I kept my secret proudly inviolate.  I do not believe at this moment she dreams that—­Do you?”

“She does not.”

“Thank God!  I was a most conceited fool, puffed up with spiritual pride, tempting God needlessly.  I went, I saw her.  Heaven is my witness, that as far as passion goes, my heart is as pure as yours:  but I found that I still cared more for her than for any being on earth:  and I found too the sort of man upon whom—­God forgive me!  I must not talk of that—­I despised him, hated him, pretended to teach him his duty, by behaving better to her than he did—­the spiritual coxcomb that I was!  What business had I with it?  Why not have left all to God and her good sense?  The devil tempted me to-day, in the shape of an angel of courtesy and chivalry; and here the end is come.  I must find that man, Miss St. Just, if I travel the world in search of him.  I must ask his pardon frankly, humbly, for my impertinence.  Perhaps so I may bring him back to her, and not die with a curse on my head for having parted those whom God has joined.  And then to the old fighting-trade once more—­the only one, I believe, I really understand; and see whether a Russian bullet will not fly straighter than a clumsy Sikh’s.”

Valencia listened, awe-stricken; and all the more so because this was spoken in a calm, half-abstracted voice, without a note of feeling, save where he alluded to his own mistakes.  When it was over, she rose without a word, and took both his hands in her own, sobbing bitterly.

“You forgive me, then, all the misery which I have caused!”

“Do not talk so!  Only forgive me having fancied for one moment that you were anything but what you are, an angel out of heaven.”

Campbell hung down his head.

“Angel, truly!  Azrael, the angel of death, then.  Go to her now—­go, and leave a humbled penitent man alone with God.”

“Oh, my Saint Pere!” cried she, bursting into tears.  “This is too wretched—­all a horrid dream—­and when, too—­when I had been counting on telling you something so different!—­I cannot now, I have not the heart.”