“Why didn’t you trust me?” I said, bitterly. “How could you doubt what I would do? I trusted you. From the moment you came riding toward me, I thanked God for the sight of such a woman. For making anything so beautiful.”
I stopped, for I saw I had again offended. At the words she drew back quickly, and her eyes shone with indignation. She looked at me as though I had tried to touch her with my hand. But I spoke on without heeding her. I repeated the words with which I had offended.
“Yes,” I said, “I thanked God for anything so noble and so beautiful. To me, you could do no wrong. But you! You judged me before you even knew my name. You said I was a cad who went about armed to fight unarmed men. To you I was a coward who could be frightened off by a tale of bulls-eyes, and broken pipe-stems at a Paris fair. What do I care for your brother’s tricks. Let him see my score cards at West Point. He’ll find them framed on the walls. I was first a coward and a cad, and now I am a bully and a hired assassin. From the first, you and your brother have laughed at me and mine while all I asked of you was to be what you seemed to be, what I was happy to think you were. I wanted to believe in you. Why did you show me that you can be selfish and unfeeling? It is you who do not understand. You understand so little,” I cried, “that I pity you from the bottom of my heart. I give you my word, I pity you.”
“Stop,” she commanded. I drew back and bowed, and we stood confronting each other in silence.
“And they call you a brave man,” she said at last, speaking slowly and steadily, as though she were picking each word. “It is like a brave man to insult a woman, because she wants to save her brother’s life.”
When I raised my face it was burning, as though she had thrown vitriol.
“If I have insulted you, Miss Fiske,” I said, “if I have ever insulted any woman, I hope to God that to-morrow morning your brother will kill me.”
When I turned and looked back at her from the door, she was leaning against one of the pillars with her face bent in her hands, and weeping bitterly.
I rode to the barracks and spent several hours in writing a long letter to Beatrice. I felt a great need to draw near to her. I was confused and sore and unhappy, and although nothing of this, nor of the duel appeared in my letter, I was comforted to think that I was writing it to her. It was good to remember that there was such a woman in the world, and when I compared her with the girl from whom I had just parted, I laughed out loud.
And yet I knew that had I put the case to Beatrice, she would have discovered something to present in favor of Miss Fiske.