rom his cigarette with his
forefinger, but that was the only move he made. Jose's hand trembled and
came down harmlessly by his side.

"I was mistaken," he said, smiling queerly. "You have never loved any
woman, Senor; and I think the sadness I have seen in your eyes is for
yourself, that life has cheated you so. If you had known love, you could
never have said that. Love, Senor, is worth everything a man has to
give--even his life. You would know that, if you had ever loved." He
waited a moment, closed his teeth upon further words, turned abruptly on
his heel and went away into the fog-darkened night.

Dade, with a slight curl to his lips that did not look quite like a
smile, stared into the fire, where the embers were growing charred for
half their length, and the flames were waving wearily and shrinking back
to the coals, and the coals themselves were filmed with gray. The
cigarette went cold and clammy in his fingers, and in his eyes was that
sadness of which Jose had spoken; and something else besides.

They would fight, those two, and fight to kill. Since the world was
first peopled, men had fought as they would fight--for love; for the
possession of a pretty thing--warm, capricious, endearing, with possibly
a heart and a soul beneath; possibly. And love--what was love, after
all? What is love worth? He had loved her, too; at least, he had felt
all the emotions that either of them had felt for her. He was not sure
that he did not still feel them, or would if he let himself go. He did
not believe, however, that those emotions were worth more than
everything else in the world; more than his life, or honor, or
friendship. He had choked love, strangled it, starved it for sake of
friendship; and, sitting there staring abstractedly into the filming
coals, he wondered if he had done wrong; if those two were right, and
love was worth fighting for.

The man who fought the hardest, he felt, would in this case win that for
which he fought. For he felt in his heart, that Teresita was only a
pretty little animal, the primitive woman who would surrender to
strength; and that he would win in the end who simply refused to yield
before her coquetries.

With a quick, impatient gesture he threw his cigarette into the coals,
kicked viciously a lazily smoking brand which sent up a little blaze and
a spurt of sparks that died almost immediately to dull coals again.

"Love's like that," he muttered pessimistically, standing up and