grudgingly, not with congratulation.

As he saw it, he stood in a perpetual pillory. When they had robbed
him of his honor they had left him naked, and life without honor had
lost its flavor. He could eat, he could drink, he could exist. He
knew that in many corners of the world white arms would reach out to
him and men would beckon him to a place at table.

But he could not cross that little strip of turf between him and the
chattering group on the veranda and hand his card to the admiral's
orderly. Swanson loved life. He loved it so that without help, money,
or affection he could each morning have greeted it with a smile. But
life without honor! He felt a sudden hot nausea of disgust. Why was he
still clinging to what had lost its purpose, to what lacked the one
thing needful?

"If life be an ill thing," he thought, "I can lay it down!"

The thought was not new to him, and during the two past weeks of
aimless wandering he had carried with him his service automatic. To
reassure himself he laid his fingers on its cold smooth surface. He
would wait, he determined, until the musicians had finished their
concert and the women and children had departed, and then--

Then the orderly would find him where he was now seated, sunken against
the hawser-post with a hole through his heart. To his disordered brain
his decision appeared quite sane. He was sure he never had been more
calm. And as he prepared himself for death he assured himself that for
one of his standard no other choice was possible. Thoughts of the
active past, or of what distress in the future his act would bring to
others, did not disturb him. The thing had to be, no one lost more
heavily than himself, and regrets were cowardly.

He counted the money he had on his person and was pleased to find there
was enough to pay for what services others soon must render him. In
his pockets were letters, cards, a cigarette-case, each of which would
tell his identity. He had no wish to conceal it, for of what he was
about to do he was not ashamed. It was not his act. He would not have
died "by his own hand." To his unbalanced brain the officers of the
court-martial were responsible. It was they who had killed him. As he
saw it, they had made his death as inevitable as though they had
sentenced him to be shot at sunrise.

A line from "The Drums of the Fore and Aft" came back to him. Often he
had quoted it, when some one in the service had suffered