"Oh, Clement," she said, "if you were killed--killed uselessly!--now that I have found you, I could not bear it.Dear, I could not bear it!"Cleggett was profoundly moved.He yearned to take her in his arms to comfort her, and to promise anything she wished.And the thoughtcame to him too that, if he should perish, the one kiss, given and received in the darkness and danger of fight and storm, would be all the brave sweetness of her that he would know this side of the grave; the thought came to him bitterly.For an instant he wavered.
"Agatha!" he said with dry lips."I have already accepted the fellow's challenge.""And what of that?" she cried."Would you cling to a barren point of honor in despite of love?""Even so," he said, and sighed.
"Oh, Clement," she said, "I cannot bear it! I cannot bear to lose you! I always knew you were in the world somewhere--and now that I have found you it is only to give you up! It is too much!"Cleggett was silent for a moment.When he spoke it was slowly and gently, but earnestly.
"No point of honor is a barren one, dear," he said."What the man lying there may be matters nothing.It is not to him that I have given my word, but to myself.In our hurried modern life we are not punctilious enough about these things.Perhaps, in the old days, the men and women were worse than we in many ways.But they held to a few traditions, or the best of them did, that make the loose and tawdry manners of this age seem cheap indeed.All my life I have known that there was something shining and simple and precious concealed from the common herd of men in this common age, which the brighter spirits of the old days lived by and served and worshiped.I have always seen it plainly, and always tried to live by it, too.Perhaps it was never, in any period, more than a dream; but I have dreamed that dream.And anyone who dreams that dream will have a reverence for his spoken word no matter to whom it is passed.I may be a fool to fight this man; well then, that is the kind of fool I am! Indeed, I know I am a fool by the judgments of this age.But I have never truly lived in this age.I have lived in the past; I have held to the dream; I have believed in the bright adventure; I have walked with the generous, chivalric spirits of the great ages; they have come to me out ofmy books and dwelt with me and been my companions, and the realities of time and place have been unreal in their presence.I see myself so walking always.It may be that I am a vain ass, but I cannot help it.It may be that I am a little mad; but I would rather be mad with a Don Quixote than sane with an Andrew Carnegie and pile up platitudes and dollars.
"And all this foolishness of mine is somehow bound up with the thought that I have engaged to fight that evil fellow, and must do it; all the bright, sane madness in me cries out that he is to die by this hand of mine.
"I have opened my heart to you, as I have never done to anyone before.And now I put myself into your hands.But, oh, take care--for it is something in me better than myself that I give you to deal with! And you can cripple it forever, because I love you and I shall listen to you.Shall I fight him?"She had listened, mute and immobile, and as he spoke the red sun made a sudden glory of her hair.She leaned towards him, and it was as if the spirit of all the man's lifelong, foolish, romantic musings were in her eyes and on her face.
"Fight him!" she said."And kill him!"
And then her head was on his shoulder, and his arms were about her."Don't die!" she sobbed."Don't die!""Don't fear," he said, "I feel that I'll make short work of him."She smiled courageously back at him; with her hands upon his shoulders she held him back and looked at him with tilted head.
"If you are killed," she said, "it will have been more than most women ever get, to have known and loved you for two days.""Two days?" he said."Forever!" "Forever!" she said.
