“Why, Brown, what did you do that you had to come West?”

“Nothing,” said the student, flushing a little—­“except be useless.”

“I thought,” said the major, quickly, with a desperate but sickly attempt at pleasantry, “that you had gone in for Florence again; she’s worth all your ‘lost sheep of the house of Israel.’”

“I don’t make love to women who love other men,” replied Brown.

“Don’t, please, Brown,” said the major, turning manly in a moment.  “I feel worse about her than about all my creditors or those infernal bonds.  I got into the snarl before I knew her; that’s the only way I can quiet my conscience.  Of course the—­matter is all up now.  I wrote her as good an apology as I could, and a release; she’d have taken the latter without my giving it, but—­”

“No she wouldn’t,” interrupted the student.

“How do you know?” demanded the major, with a suspicious glance, which did not escape Brown.  “Did you torment her by proposing again upon the top of her other troubles?”

“No,” said Brown; “don’t be insulting.  But I know that she keeps herself secluded, and that her looks and spirits are dreadfully changed.  If she cared nothing for you, she knows society would cheerfully forgive her if she were to show it.”

“I wish to Satan that I hadn’t met you, then,” said the major.  “I’ve taken solid comfort in the thought that most likely she was again the adored of all adorers, and was forgetting me, as she has so good a right to do.”

“Major,” said Brown, bringing his hand down on the major’s shoulder in a manner suggestive of a deputy sheriff, “you ought to go back to that girl!”

“And fail,” suggested the major.  “Thank you; and allow me to say you’re a devilish queer fellow for suggesting it.  Is it part of your religion to forgive a successful rival?”

“It’s part of my religion, when I love, to love the woman more than I love myself,” said Brown, with a face in which pain and earnestness strove for the mastery.  “She loves you.  I loved her, and want to see her happy.”

The defaulter grasped the student’s hand.

“Brown,” said he, “you’re one of God’s noblemen; she told me so once, but I didn’t imagine then that I’d ever own up to it myself.  It can’t be done, though; she can’t marry a man in disgrace—­I can’t ask a woman to marry me on nothing; and, besides, there’s the matter of those infernal bonds.  I can’t clear that up, and keep out of the sheriff’s fingers.”

“I can,” said Brown.

“How?” asked the ex-broker, with staring eyes.

“I’ll lend the money.”

The major dropped Brown’s hand.

“You heavenly lunatic!” said he.  “I always did think religion made fools of men when they got too much of it.  Then I could go back on the Street again; the boys would be glad to see me clear myself—­not meeting my engagements wouldn’t be remembered against me.  But, say—­borrow money from an old rival to make myself right with the girl he loved!  No, excuse me.  I’ve got some sense of honor left!”