And to bury in battle
My dream of love.”
The stranger sighed as he turned his hollow eyes on Viola’s pale face, replying:
“I will hasten, for I know all the anguish of suspense myself too well to inflict it on another, so will go back to the time in April, 1896, when I first made the acquaintance of Rolfe Maxwell, whom I envied above all things for his newly achieved fame as a great war correspondent.”
“Yes, oh, yes!” breathed Viola, eagerly, her deep eyes burning on his face as he continued:
“In March a year ago I came from my home in Florida to Cuba with the intention of enlisting in the army to fight for the freedom of that fair isle of the sea, but owing to a physical defect, an organic weakness of the heart, I was not accepted. Through sheer disappointment, I was quite ill for days afterward, during which I made the acquaintance of Rolfe Maxwell, whom I admired and envied equally as a journalist who had leaped into sudden but well-deserved fame as the capable correspondent of a leading newspaper in New York.
“He was so kind to me in my illness that we became great friends, and confidential enough for me to suspect that the brilliant, versatile young man had suffered some crushing disappointment in love that had embittered his cheerful nature to the verge of despair.”
“Alas!” breathed Viola, while her father stifled a sigh of keen self-reproach for the fatal blunder he had made in parting Rolfe and Viola.
The stranger sighed in sympathy, and went on with his story:
“Finding that I could not enlist in the army, my next ambition was to become a correspondent, so as to let my pen at least be employed in defending the cause of the heroic revolutionists, whom I regarded as the noblest, most injured of men.