"I don't understand you."

"You don't want to understand me. Come, now. You, as an army man,
ought to know something of the history of poker in these United
States. Listen, my friend. Do you recall a certain game played by
a man higher in authority--younger than he is to-day--a game played
upon a snowbound train in the North country? Do you remember what
the stakes were--then? Do you recall that that man later became a
president of the United States? Come. There is fine precedent for
our little enterprise."

The swift flush on the face of the other man made his answer.
Dunwody went on mercilessly:

"He played then much as you do now. There was against him then, as
there is now against you, a man who admired not so much just one
woman in all the world as, let us say, one particular woman then
and there present. Perhaps you remember his name--Mr. Parish--later
ennobled by the German government and long known as a land baron in
New York. Come! Think of it! Picture that snowbound train, that
great citizen, and Parish, playing and playing, until at last it
came to the question of a woman--not so beautiful as this one here,
but in her own way shrewd, _the same sort of woman_, I might
say--mysterious, beautiful, and--no, don't protest, and I'll not
describe. You remember very well her name. It was pleasant
property not so long ago for everybody. They played for the _love_,
not for the hand, of that woman. Parish won her. Do you remember
now?"

The younger man sat looking at him silently, his face now grown
quite pale. "I am unwilling, sir, to allow any man to mention such
details regarding the past life of my commander-in-chief, a
president of the United States. It is not seemly. My profession
should free me, by its very nature, from conversation such as this.
My errand should free me. My place as a gentleman should free me,
and her, from such discussion. It must, it shall, sir!"

"Forgive me," said Dunwody, coloring. "Your rebuke is just. I ask
your pardon freely; but remember, what I say here is between us
two, and no one else. Why deny yourself the luxury of remembering
such a game as that? It was a man's game, and well worth the
playing. Your former head of the army, at least, lost; and he
paid. The other won. All Ogdensburg can tell you about that
to-day. They lived there--together--Parish and the woman, till he
went abroad. Yes, and she was a prisoner there not simply for a
short t