'Despondent is he, poor chap?' he asked presently.
'Even less thankful to be alive than you seem to be free again.'
Jerry sat upright, his pale face flushing, his eyes shining.
'I? Not thankful?' he cried in a voice shaken to the verge of an utter breakdown. 'I have been in hell these two days, and you have brought me out—but—but—go away, Blount, or I shall make a fool of myself!'
Lieutenant Breton was breakfasting late the next morning, when Pryor’s orderly appeared with an immediate summons to the commanding officer’s presence. War, armed cap-à-pie, sprang into existence in Jerry’s heart at this summons. He had proved Pryor capable of tyranny without reason, and could not hope, when the spirit of such a man had been as cruelly wounded as his body, that he would incline to mercy. But in the blessedness of his own safety he forgave Rosita her silence, and, while aware of the perplexities that would beset him, he vowed that no admission of her guilt should be extorted from him.
There was, however, neither wrath nor challenge in the hollow eyes which confronted him when he stood beside Pryor’s bed, and a gaunt hand feebly moved across the counterpane toward him.
'You are a fine fellow, Breton,' the major murmured. 'I beg your pardon!'
Jerry dumbly clasped the quivering fingers.
'They have told me that you flung a pistol over the bluffs,' Pryor continued slowly. 'Of course I know whose pistol it was. But I wish you to understand that the shooting was my fault, like the whole affair. I provoked her with words I had no right to speak; I denied her the mere justice she demanded. Except for your courage I should have brought disgrace upon her, as I have brought death.'
'Death? Rosita?'