"Nay, Matilda," and Gerald again passionately caught and enfolded her to his heart, "that image alone were sufficient to mould me to your will, even although I had not before resolved. And yet," he pursued, after a short pause, "how base, how terrible to slay an unsuspecting enemy! Would we could meet in single combat--and why not? Yes it can, it shall be so. Fool that I was not to think of it before. Matilda, my own love, rejoice with me, for there is a means by which your honor may be avenged, and my own soul unstained by guilt. I will seek this man, and fasten a quarrel upon him. What say you, Matilda--speak to me, tell me that you consent." Gerald gasped with agony. "Never, Gerald!" she returned, with startling impressiveness, while the color, which during the warm embrace of her lover had returned to it once more, fled from her cheek. "To challenge him would be but to ensure your own doom, for few in the army of the United States equal him in the use of the pistol or the small sword; and, even were it otherwise," she concluded, her eye kindling into a fierce expression, "were he the veriest novice in the exercise of both, my vengeance would be incomplete, did he not go down to his grave with all his sins on his head. No, no, Gerald, in the fulness of the pride of existence must he perish. He must not dream of death until he feels the blow that is aimed at his heart." The agitation of Matilda was profound beyond anything she had ever yet exhibited. Her words were uttered in tones that betrayed a fixed and unbroken purpose of the soul, and when she had finished, she threw her face upon the bosom of her lover, and ground her teeth together with a force that showed the effect produced upon her imagination by the very picture of the death she had drawn. A pause of some moments ensued. Gerald was visibly disconcerted, and the arm which encircled the waist of the revengeful woman dropped, as if in disappointment, at his side. "How strange and inconsistent are the prejudices of man," resumed Matilda, half mournfully, half in sarcasm; "here is a warrior--a spiller of human life by profession; his sword has been often dyed in the heart's blood of his fellow man, and yet he shudders at the thought of adding one murder more to the many already committed. What child-like weakness!" "Murder! Matilda--call you it murder to overcome the enemies of one's country in fair and honorable combat, and in the field of glory?" "Call _you_ it what you will--disguise it under whatever cloak you may--it is no less murder. Nay, the worst of murders, for you but do the duty of the hireling slayer. In cold blood, and for a stipend, do you put an end to the fair existence of him who never injured you in thought or deed, and whom, under other circumstances, you would perhaps have taken to your heart in friendship." "This is true, but the difference of the motive, Matilda! The one approved of heaven and of man, the other alike condemned of both."