Page:Tales of the Unexpected (1924).djvu/153

 'My old habits of scheming and organising reasserted themselves. I could even see myself suddenly returning to the north, and all the dramatic effect of it. All that this man said witnessed to the disorder of the partv indeed, but not to its damage. I should go back stronger than I had come. And then I thought of my lady. You see—how can I tell you? There were certain peculiarities of our relationship—as things are I need not tell about that—which would render her presence with me impossible. I should have had to leave her; indeed. 1 should have had to renounce her clearly and openly, if I was to do all that I could do in the north. And the man knew that, even as he talked to her and me, knew it as well as she did, that my steps to duty were—first, separation, then abandonment. At the touch of that thought my dream of a return was shattered. I turned on the man suddenly, as he was imagining his eloquence was gaining ground with me.

"What have I to do with these things now?" I said.

"I have done with them. Do you think I am coquetting with your people in coming here? "

'"No," he said; "but"

'"Why cannot you leave me alone? I have done with these things. I have ceased to be anything but a private man."

'"Yes," he answered. "But have you thought?—this talk of war, these reckless challenges, these wild aggressions "

'I stood up.

'"No," I cried. "I won't hear you. I took count of all those things, I weighed them—and I have come away."

'He seemed to consider the possibility of persistence. He looked from me to where the lady sat regarding us.

"War," he said, as if he were speaking to himself, and then turned slowly from me and walked away.