I strove to be calm, but almost in a rage I was now walking up and down the room. "Yes, you should. And the imbecile said that. He ought to have his lying old tongue torn out." "Be cautious, Mr. Belford. The man--" "The man what?" I demanded. "May think he has a cause. Wait a moment, please. A cause to believe that you are in the young woman's heart, and what more would he need to make him bitter toward you? Be reasonable." "You are right, Washington; you are right. But when we meet, what then?" "You must not meet." "But we might." "You must go away." "What, to blast her name?" "No, to save a life. Perhaps two lives." "I will not go away. There will be but one life to forfeit--mine." "Would that save her name, Mr. Belford?" "Look here, you don't mean that the people believe that newspaper's insinuation." "They don't. Representatives of the best families have called to show their faith, but what would they think if Estell should shoot you?" "And what would they think if I should run away? No, I will stay." "Then I have nothing more to say, Mr. Belford." He strode out, catching up his hat at the door, and I counted the steps as he trod down the stairs. Early the next morning I walked out from the town, but at no time did I turn toward the Senator's house. I went down the road that led through the cypress land, into the deep silence of the swamp. I passed the house of the Notorious Bugg, and I saw it trembling (a mere fancy, of course) with the shake of the aguish sons-in-law. A road, impassable except in the driest of seasons, wound about among deep pools of yellow slime. The ground shook under my careful tread, and the slightest jar was sufficient to disturb an acre of spongy desolation. I sat on a log with the feeling that no eye could see me. Sometimes the silence was so strained that it sang in my ear; sometimes I was startled by the flapping and the shriek of a gaunt bird, skimming the surface of the ooze. In this creepy solitude I took myself to task. Behind an error of the heart there stands a sophist, a Libanius, to offer a specious consolation--a voice ever ready to say, "It was not your fault; you do not create your own desires and neither can you control them." This is true enough, but a man can control his actions. I should have gone away, for the commonest of sense had pointed out the weakness, the crime, of remaining. And what had I hoped for? To tell her that I would wait, with a hope ever warm in my heart. I could not see a crime in that. But I could not tell her--she would not permit me to lead up to so embarrassing a subject. Washington was right. It was my duty to go away, not to save myself, but to keep Estell's hands free of blood.