Loo-ga-lay said it was only a mistake, but the childlike innocence of his face, his oaths and protestations, the twenty hired witnesses he brought to prove him guiltless availed him not, and the richly deserved three months' "rigorous" was duly awarded. With the giving of this sentence, the details of which are of no account, the official programme of the day was over, and Peregrine free from office routine until Monday morning. He was to see Ruys this afternoon, and her face appeared to flit before him and his heart bowed down to the vision; but he set his teeth and put away the thoughts that came whether he would or not. Was he not measuring the strength of his soul or will, as he would have called it, against the strength of his passion? He was going to pit the ideal against the real, and to his strong young heart the struggle could have but one issue. He knew--none better--that he was running a desperate risk, but there was no doubt in his mind that the danger had to be faced, and there was a curious pleasure in facing the danger. And all this war, which was to make or mar him, was to be silently fought out in the drawing-room of a very pretty woman. He found her there, looking the picture of repose, her little dog coiled snugly at her feet, and a yellow-backed novel before her. She put the book down with a smile as he came in, and held out her hand. "I am so glad to see you, Mr. Jackson. You must be horrified to see me, a parson's wife, reading a yellow-back; but it is Armorel of Lyonesse, and books like that make one feel good, do they not? One seems to want so much support to keep on the straight path through life." He picked up the volume from the table. "Yes," he said, "Armorel was a woman who would have made any man great. She was one to die for." "Or to live for, don't you think? I should certainly not like the man I loved to die for me." A subtle inflection of the voice made him almost start as he looked up, but the gray deep of her eyes was pure and unruffled. "I would rather," she continued, "die for the man I loved. I think women were made for sacrifice." "Don't you think that men are capable of it?" "Of sacrificing women--yes. Is it not done daily? Look at that man in this book--what do they call him? Ah, yes, Roland--Roland Lee. What a worthless wretch he was, to what an abyss he sank! Did not Armorel fling herself away on him? Is it not a terrible thing for a man to bind a pure woman to him, knowing that she must find out things that tell her her idol has feet of clay? Oh, yes! the woman builds herself such castles in the air, and how they crumble and fade!" "And does this never happen to man?" "I don't think so. I don't think that a man ever loves in the sense that a woman wishes to be loved." She bent forward and took the book from his hand as she spoke.