“'Don't go into all that,' I said. 'I heard all about that last night—from her! Open the locket, and let us see whose face is there!'
“He opened it, and dropped the locket. He reeled against the wall, with his hands over his face, as if he had been struck a physical blow.
“I picked the toy up and looked at it.
“The face in the locket was neither his face nor mine. It was the face of—of the man who ran from the pergola and vaulted over the orchard wall into the woods that summer night a year earlier; the man whom I had not, for the moment, recognized.
“We stood there, this man who had been my best friend and I, with the locket between us, and I debated whether to strike him down——”
The narrator paused. And then he said, fixing Dr. Beaulieu with an intent gaze:
“Should I have struck him down? You, who are a teacher of ethics, who set yourself up to be, after a fashion, a preacher, a priest, a spiritual director, tell me, would I have been justified if I had killed him?”
Dr. Beaulieu seemed to shrink, seemed to contract and grow smaller, physically, under the other man's look. He opened his mouth as if to articulate, but for a second or two no word came. And then, regaining something of his usual poise, he said, although his voice was a bit husky:
“No! It is for the Creator of life to take life, and no other. Hatred and strife are disharmony, and bring their own punishment by throwing the soul out of unity with the spirit of love which rules the universe.”
It sounded stereotyped and emotionless, even in Dr. Beaulieu's own ears, as he said it; there was a mocking gleam in the eyes of the other man that spoke of a far more vital and genuine emotion. Dr. Beaulieu licked his lips and there came a knot in his forehead; beads of perspiration stood out upon his brow.