The cold cutting accent of her voice smote him as the edge of
a sword. "Drive on, Johnson!" she sharply cried. "These vagabond
people must face the General himself." Then came the insane
self-sacrifice of his reckless downfall, but he had spared her to
the very last.
He bowed his head in his hands, and a storm of agony swept over
him as he recalled the word "traitor," branded upon his brow as
a badge of shame, and again he wandered along that devious path
which had led him year by year downward. Too bitterly self-accusing
to palliate his past, he only knew that in all the long years of
social pariahhood he had learned to despise all men and to trust
no woman! For had not Friendship been a lie to him, Love only
a hollow cheat, and woman's vows of deathless loyalty but writ in
sand to be washed out by the next wave of passion?
And yet, stained with crime, there was one breath of truth which
swept over his soul as fresh as the voice of the "pines of Ramoth
Hill!" His eyes were misty and his breath choked in a sorrowing gasp
of manly remorse, as the winsome face of the true-hearted Justine
rose up before him in this hour of lonely agony! Her devotion had
touched the wayworn wanderer, and, pure and unselfish, her love
had been the one bright star of all these darkened years!
"By Jove! She is a royal soul! If I could only save her the shock
of the awakening," he murmured.
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