“And she—when she was afraid of life or death, she ran to you; but when she wasn’t afraid of life——”
As he struck his chest and opened his mouth to proceed, RoBards yelled:
“You say it and I’ll kill you!”
“You—kill anybody?” Chalender sneered, and RoBards sneered again:
“Oh, I’ve killed one or two in my day.”
Chalender apparently did not hear this mad brag, for he was bragging on his own account:
“You couldn’t kill me; nor could ten men like you. Thousands have tried to kill me. For four years the Rebels kept shooting at me and whacking at me with their sabers, jabbing with their bayonets and searching for me with grape and canister, but I didn’t die. It seems I shall never die. Maybe that’s because I’ve never quite lived. I loved Patty and you got her. You oughtn’t to be hurt to learn that another man loved your love. But if it makes you mad to hear me say it, maybe you could kill me. Then my blood would run out on this marble that I brought to her when she was young and pretty. Oh, but she was pretty, a pretty thing, a sweet thing. What a damned, ugly world, to let a pretty thing like Patty Jessamine suffer and die!
“Oh, Davie, Davie, what a darling she was, in what a dirty world!”
He put out his hand hungrily in the air and something—as if it were Patty’s ghost smiling irresistibly—persuaded RoBards’ hand forward to take Chalender’s and wring it with sympathy.
So two souls, two enemies on earth, meeting in hell, might gaze into each other’s eyes and find such agony there that they would lock hands in mutual pity.