“I am afraid your future husband would not approve of the correspondence, and as you tell him everything--no, I had far better risk it now, and tell you my plans at once. I am going to South America, where I am going to be a real live general over a small but excellent little army. I know, for I made some of it myself.” “And will you be safe there?” “Yes, if you mean from Emmons and the process of the law. On the other hand, some people do not consider soldiering the very safest of professions--especially in those countries, where they sometimes really fight, and, contrary to the popular notion, when they do fight, it is very much the real thing. Fancy your feelings, Nellie, when some day you read in the papers: ‘The one irreparable loss to the Liberal party was the death of General Don Luis Vickers, who died at the head of his column....’ Ah, I should die happy, if only I could die with sufficient glory to induce Emmons to refer to me in public as ‘an odd sort of fellow, a cousin of my wife’s.’ I can hear him. My spirit would return to gloat.” “He will never say that,” said Nellie, with a meaning which Vickers, unhappily, lost. “Ah, you can’t tell, Nellie. ‘General Luis Vickers’ sounds so much better than ‘Vickers, the man the police want.’ And Emmons’s standards, I notice, depend almost entirely on what people say. Nellie,” he went on suddenly, “I have something to say to you. You and I are never going to see each other again, and Heaven knows I don’t want to write to you or hear from you again. This is all there will ever be, and I am going to offer you a piece of advice as if I were going to die to-morrow. Don’t marry Emmons! He is not the right sort. Perhaps you think I have no right to criticise a man who has always kept a good deal straighter than I, but it is just because I have knocked about that I know. He won’t do. You are independent now. Your farm will bring you in something. Keep the fellow I put in there, and sell a few of the upland lots. You won’t be rich, but you’ll be comfortable. Don’t marry Emmons.” “Why do you say this to me?” “Because I know it’s the right thing to say. I can say anything to you. As far as a woman like you is concerned, I realize a man like myself--without a cent, without even a decent name--doesn’t exist at all; not even Emmons himself could suppose that in advising you not to marry him, I have any hope for myself.” “And yet that is just what he does think.” She forced herself to look at him, and her look had the anxious temerity of a child who has just defied its elders. “Nellie, what do you mean?” “I am not going to marry Mr. Emmons.” “You are not! You are _not_!! Oh, my darling! What a place the world is! Have I really lost you?” Nellie smiled at him, without turning her head. “I thought you had no hope.” He had no sense of decency, for he kissed her twice on the public highway. “I haven’t,” he answered. “I can’t stay, and you can’t go with me. Imagine you in the tropics.”