I nearly shot myself that night. I took out my revolver twice and laid it between my teeth, and was only stopped by the consideration that, if I did it, my suicide would be connected with the affair, and some garbled account of the brawl and of what was behind it would leak out.
The next day old Count von Augener, who had been telegraphed for, came to my cabin. He hated me as he had hated my father, and I knew it.
The interview was brief enough, and he sounded the keynote in the sentence with which he opened it.
"You are still alive, lieutenant?" he said, bending on me a piercing look from under his shaggy, beetling brows.
"Say what you have to say, and be good enough to keep from taunts," I answered, and then told him the thought that alone had stopped me from shooting myself.
He listened in silence, and at the close nodded.
"You have enough wit when the wine's out, and you understand what you have done. Were you other than you are, you would be tried by court-martial and shot. But your act is worse than that of a mutineer—you are a coward"—I started to my feet—"because you have struck a man you know cannot demand satisfaction."
I sank again into my chair and covered my face in shame, for the taunt was true. But to have it thus flung at me ruthlessly was worse than a red-hot brand plunged into my flesh.
The old man stopped and looked at me, pleased that he had thus tortured me.
"There is but one course open to you. You know that?"