I saw my way as clearly as though written instructions were actually in my hands. He was a coward. Brave enough for the ordinary routine matters of life and of his profession as a soldier, he yet lacked the courage to face the certain death that was waiting for him in the barrel of the pistol lying to my hand; and throughout the whole scene he had been oppressed and overborne by the fear of what such a minute as this must mean for him. It was through his cowardice, his readiness to sacrifice honour for life, that I was to win my way to the knowledge I needed and achieve my purpose. I began the task with studied cruelty. I bent on him such a look of stern hate and menace as I could assume, and dallied deliberately with his terror before I even laid finger on the pistol stock. Then I smiled as in grim triumph, and picking up the pistol looked carefully at it, and from it across the space between us to him. His fight for strength was literally repulsive to witness. Terror possessed him so completely that both nerves and muscles refused to obey the direction of the brain, and the pause I made proved the breaking point in his endurance. "I can’t stand; give me a chair," he gasped, piteously. "Stand back, gentlemen, if you please," I thundered, when his seconds were going to him; and the sound of my voice increased his already crushing fear, so that he swayed and fell forward on the table, like a man collapsed in drink, his arms extended and his hands clenched in a veritable agony of despair and terror. I allowed a full thirty seconds to pass in a silence that must have been awesome for him, and then let drop the first hint of hope. "It is my right to fire when I please. I have not said I shall exercise it to-night." At that I saw the strength begin to move in him again. His fingers relaxed, he drew his arms back and then gradually his body, and at length raised himself slowly and looked at me—question, doubt, fright, appeal, hope, all struggling for expression—a look that, had I been as full of rage and yearning for revenge as he had been and as he believed me to be, would have sufficed to stay my finger on the trigger or have driven me to fire in the air. I have never seen such haggard misery. There was another pause, in which I looked at him, my face set apparently upon the execution of an implacable resolve to kill him. When it had had its effect and I saw the grey shades of renewed despair falling upon him, I said— "Gentlemen, I will ask you to withdraw a while. It may be that a way can be found out of this business which may lead to my waiving or indefinitely postponing my right. If Colonel Livenza is willing, I will speak with him privately." A hurried whispered conference between him and his seconds followed, and then we two were left alone. *CHAPTER XIV* *A COWARD’S STORY*