. What did it all mean? Had he ever seen her? Not
that he knew. Had she ever known him? If so, when and where? If so,
why such emotion? Who could this be that thus recoiled from him at
encountering his glance? And he found all these questions utterly
unanswerable.

In the General's eventful life there were many things which he could
recall. He had wandered over many lands in all parts of the world,
and had known his share of sorrow and of joy. Seating himself once
more in his chair he tried to summon up before his memory the figures
of the past, one by one, and compare them with this woman whom he had
seen. Out of the gloom of that past the ghostly figures came, and
passed on, and vanished, till at last from among them all two or
three stood forth distinctly and vividly; the forms of those who had
been associated with him in one event of his life; that life's first
great tragedy; forms well remembered--never to be forgotten. He saw
the form of one who had been betrayed and forsaken, bowed and crushed
by grief, and staring with white face and haggard eyes; he saw the
form of the false friend and foul traitor slinking away with averted
face; he saw the form of the true friend, true as steel, standing
up solidly in his loyalty between those whom he loved and the Ruin
that was before them; and, lastly, he saw the central figure of
all--a fair young woman with a face of dazzling beauty; high-born,
haughty, with an air of high-bred grace and inborn delicacy; but the
beauty was fading, and the charm of all that grace and delicacy
was veiled under a cloud of shame and sin. The face bore all that
agony of woe which looks at us now from the eyes of Guido's Beatrice
Cenci--eyes which disclose a grief deeper than tears; eyes whose
glance is never forgotten.

Suddenly there came to the General a Thought like lightning, which
seemed to pierce to the inmost depths of his being. He started back
as he sat, and for a moment looked like one transformed to stone. At
the horror of that Thought his face changed to a deathly pallor, his
features grew rigid, his hands clenched, his eyes fixed and staring
with an awful look. For a few moments he sat thus, and then with a
deep groan he sprang to his feet and paced the apartment.

The exercise seemed to bring relief.

"I'm a cursed fool!" he muttered. "The thing's impossible--yes,
absolutely impossible."

Again and again he paced the apartment, and gradually he recovered
himself.

"Pooh!