The regimen of love and leisure did wonders for Broussard. His thin face filled up, his color returned, he was soon able to dance and ride and shoot with the best of his comrades. He did not forget the man in the military prison or the wife that watched and waited and prayed and hoped. But there was reason to hope: Lawrence was, from the beginning, a model prisoner, and the chaplain, who had lost, in the course of years, some of his confidence in repentance, began once more to believe that it was possible to regenerate a man's soul. Most prisoners are a trifle too ready to accept the theory of the forgiveness of sins. Not so Lawrence. Often, he had paroxysms of despair, accusing himself wildly and doubting whether the good God could forgive so evil a sinner as he. Sometimes, he would refuse to see his wife, declaring he was not fit for her to speak to; again, he would weep and ask for a sight of his child, now far away and in good hands. All these things, and more, the chaplain knew, from long experience, meant that Lawrence's soul was struggling toward the light. Regularly Broussard went to see him at the prison and the two men, the high-minded officer and the disgraced private, were drawn together by the secret bond between them. Often, they talked in whispers of their dead mother and Broussard would say to Lawrence:
"Our mother's spirit and your wife's love ought to save you."
Another visitor Lawrence had was Sergeant McGillicuddy. The Sergeant's merciful soul could not accept the chaplain's theory that the blow provoked by McGillicuddy had been Lawrence's salvation.
"I never knew a man who was helped by being a deserter, sir," was the Sergeant's answer to the chaplain's kindly sophism, "but Lawrence is a penitent man—that I see with my own eyes. I don't need no chaplain to tell me that, sir."
Meanwhile, Broussard kept up a steady courtship of Colonel Fortescue. Whatever views the Colonel advanced, Broussard promptly endorsed. He gave up cock fighting, motors, superfluous clothes and high-priced horses, and, if his word could be taken for it, he had adopted Spartan tastes and meant to stick to them. Colonel Fortescue rated Broussard's newly-acquired taste for the simple life at its true value, and was sometimes a trifle sardonic over it.
"I wish," said Colonel Fortescue savagely one night in his office, where he always smoked his last cigar, Mrs. Fortescue sitting by, "I wish Broussard would let up a little in his attention to me. I know exactly what it means and it is getting to be an awful nuisance."
"Cheer up," answered Mrs. Fortescue encouragingly, "he'll let up on his devotion to you as soon as he marries Anita—for I have seen ever since the night of the music ride that Anita has a secret preference for him, and it's very natural—Broussard is an attractive man."
"Can't see it," growled the Colonel.
"If you would just limber up a little and not be so stiff with him," urged Mrs. Fortescue, "let him see he can have Anita."
"How can I limber up and tell him he can have Anita?" roared the Colonel. "The fellow hasn't asked me for Anita."