“Through, Webb?” he asked.

“No, I’m not through, by a long shot, but it’s all I have time for now, for I came on a different matter.  Since I heard you were here I’ve been telephoning around, and I’ve got together a little dinner-party for to-night that you won’t evade if you have a particle of real affection for me.  I’m not going to be cheated out of it.  It’ll be a hastily arranged affair, but there may be something decent to eat and drink.  Brainard tells me you’re not going to linger in town an hour after your business is done, so I thought best to lose no time.  You’ll come, of course?  The way you’re looking just now I don’t know but you’re equal to refusing me even such a small favour as this one!”

Brown crossed the room, to lay his hands on Atchison’s shoulders.  His eyes were dark with suppressed feeling.

“My dear old friend,” said he affectionately, “I wish you wouldn’t take the thing this way.  I’m not dealing blows at those I love; if I’m dealing them at anybody it’s at myself.  I can’t possibly tell you what it means to me—­this crisis.  I can only ask you not to think hardly of me.  As for the dinner, if it will please you to have me agree to it I will, only—­I should a little rather have you stand me up against a wall and take a shot at me!”

“For a deserter?”

Atchison spoke out of his grief and anger, not from belief in the motive he imputed.  When he saw Donald Brown turn white and clench the hands he dropped from his friend’s shoulders, Atchison realized what he had done.  He winced under the sting of the quick and imperious command which answered him: 

“Take that back, Webb!”

“I do—­and apologize,” said the other man instantly, and tears smarted under his eyelids.  “You know I didn’t mean it, Don.  But—­hang it all!—­I’m bitterly disappointed and I can’t help showing it.”

“Disappointed in me—­or in my act?” Brown was still stern.

“In your act, of course.  I’m bound to acknowledge that it must take a brave man to cut cables the way you’re doing—­a mighty brave man.”

“I don’t care about being considered brave, but I won’t be called a coward.”

“I thought,” said Atchison, trying to smile, “there was something in your Bible about turning the other cheek.”

“There is,” said Brown steadily.  “And I do it when I come to your dinner.  But between now and then I’ll knock you down if you insult the course I’ve laid out for myself.”

The two men gazed at each other, the one the thorough man of the world with every sign of its prospering touch upon him, the other looking somehow more like a lean and hardened young soldier of the army than a student of theology.  Both pairs of eyes softened.  But it was Atchison’s which gave way first.

“Confound you, Don—­it’s because of that splendidly human streak in you that we love you here.  You’ve always seemed to have enough personal acquaintance with the Devil and his works to make you understand the rest of us, and refrain from being too hard on us.”