"I am the man who fought with your husband, and--" "No, no, no!" she exclaimed, holding her hands out toward him, her face ghastly. "Yes," he resumed, "yes, it is so. He was to blame. He forced it upon me. I could not escape him. He would have killed me." She let her hand fall in her lap and sat in a helpless, horrified attitude. "You will hate me now, Agnes, but I have disclosed my secret and my dreadful duty is done. For the sake of my great love, say no bitter word." She did not speak. How could she? Such a disclosure coming so suddenly and unexpectedly and from his lips, crushed her into that silence which is next to the silence of death. He trembled now and his voice broke as he said: "Do you see how hard it is? I refused to fight with him, because I did not believe in the practice of dueling, and then he forced an encounter in the street of San Antonio. I did every thing to avoid him, but I could not. I had to--to do what I did. Can you comprehend, Agnes?" Still she remained speechless, motionless, bowed down and awfully pale. "I don't want to make any unmanly excuses--I would spare him for your sake; but he was all in the wrong, and it would be----" She stopped him with a quick gesture. "I can not hear this now--I am too weak and excited. I must go. Excuse me. I _must_ go." She arose almost with a spring and passed swiftly out of the room. A feeling of desolation swept, like a breath of noisome air, through the breast of Reynolds. It was as if the whole world had become a desert and his life a dreary, void waste. And yet there was a sense of relief, as if a great load had been cast aside. A load indeed, but not all the load he carried. He tried in vain to feel that his whole duty was done. He hid his face in his hands, but he could not shut out the truth. His whole past life lay like a fiercely illuminated panorama under his inward gaze. Ah, by what a zig-zag path, through what torments, had been his course! And how he had always panted for happiness! Must it end here? He raised his head and smiled in a way that would have been terrible to see. He clenched his hands, his eyes flamed. All the melodramatic fierceness and fervor of the old South had come upon him. He was ready with desperate courage to fight all the world. CHAPTER XVI. CONVALESCENT.