At last, the singing was over and the listeners came out of a waking dream and complimented Anita and Broussard, and the pleasant chatter of a drawing-room once more began.  Presently there were leave-takings.  Broussard gave Anita’s hand a sharp pressure, but she looked at him calmly, all her coldness resumed.  Out in the winter night Broussard cursed himself for falling in love with a child, who was an embodied caprice and did not know her own mind—­one hour thrilling him with her gladness and her low voice and her violin, and the next, looking at him as if he were a stock or a stone.  But she was so precociously charming!  And that unlucky meeting with her and with the Colonel in front of Lawrence’s door, with Mrs. Lawrence putting her hand on his shoulder.  Broussard meant to go to the Colonel the very next day and explain the whole business.  The resolve enabled Broussard to sleep in peace that night.

It was noon the next day before Broussard had a chance to ask for an interview with Colonel Fortescue.  Meanwhile, the Colonel had been finding out things.  He looked up the records of Broussard and Lawrence and found that they were both natives of the same little town in Louisiana.  That might account for their intimacy, although Lawrence was fifteen years Broussard’s senior.

Just as the Colonel’s orderly was crossing the hall of the headquarters building he came face to face with Broussard, headed straight for Colonel Fortescue’s office.  The orderly had a message from the Colonel for Mr. Broussard; the Colonel desired to see Mr. Broussard for a few minutes.

Broussard, like the Colonel, was not the man to shirk an unpleasant five minutes, so he made straight for the Colonel’s private office.  In spite of his courageous advance, Broussard felt very much as Sergeant McGillicuddy described himself when in the abhorred buggy which Mrs. McGillicuddy had given him as a Christmas gift, “Hollow inside.”  There is something appalling to a subaltern in the kind of an interview which Broussard felt was ahead of him.  He knew in advance the very tone in which Colonel Fortescue and all other Colonels prepare a wigging for a junior.  “It is my painful duty.”  The extreme politeness with which this was accompanied was not reassuring.  Then the Colonel, taking the advice of old Horace, plunged into the middle of things.

“I was very much surprised,” said Colonel Fortescue, fixing his clear gaze on Broussard, “when, yesterday evening, after dark, I saw you standing in the passage-way to the home of an enlisted man, and evidently upon familiar terms with the man’s wife.”

“I was on my way to you, sir, just now, to explain that occurrence when I received your order,” replied Broussard promptly.

“I shall be glad to have it satisfactorily explained,” said the C. O.

Colonel Fortescue had the eye of command, that secure power in his glance which is possessed by all the masters of men; the look that can wring the truth out of a man’s mouth even if that man be a liar, and can see through the eyes of a man into his soul.  This look of command suddenly flashed into Colonel Fortescue’s face, and gazing into the clear eyes of Broussard saw honor and truth and candor there as Broussard spoke.