set_ it at two or three people.
Perhaps I shall yet! And what has made you suddenly change your mind,
Eagle? At Liege, in hospital, you told me how you hated Sidney Vandyke
and felt as if you could choke his life out."

"I haven't changed my mind," he said. "I hate Vandyke now as I hated him
then, more if possible. That's not Christian, but I can't help it, or
else I don't try to help it; I'm not sure which. If by killing Vandyke I
could get back what he took from me, I should do my best to kill him.
But I am just cool enough, where he is concerned, to realize that I
can't help myself by hurting him; rather the contrary. That's where we
come to the stone wall. So I'm not going to smash what he has left of my
head on the stones he piled up against me. To do that would be giving
the enemy great satisfaction, wouldn't it?"

"Perhaps!" I had to agree with a sigh.

"But if the circumstances ever change in my favour," Eagle went on, his
pleasant face hardening into grimness, "and I can get revenge without
putting myself in the wrong, God help Vandyke!"

"I hope He _won't_ help him, when that time comes!" I exclaimed. "And I
believe it will come. Something often tells me so--tells me that I----"

"That you--what?" Eagle prompted me as I broke off.

"That I shall have some hand in the--the retribution, whatever it may
be. It's what I always pray for."

Eagle gazed straight at me, with eyes which had changed sadly since the
day they first met mine in the Wardour Street shop. I had thought them
full of romance and dreams then. Their look was harder and older now,
the look of a man who has been down very near to the gates of hell, and
by desperate fighting has battled his way up the heights again, but not
so high as to forget the red glare that singed his eyeballs. My heart
ached, because it seemed impossible that the peace of dreams and romance
could ever come back. I was glad--glad, that Eagle's heart hadn't
softened toward Sidney Vandyke, who was as bitterly his enemy to-night
as ever; but I was sorrowful because the beautiful youth of a man's soul
had been scorched in the furnace fire.

"I can't bear to think your friendship for me should harden or embitter
you, Peggy," Eagle said. "Nothing is worth that! I oughtn't to talk to
you as I've been talking now. I shan't again. Forgive me, and forget.
Help _me_ to forget! Forgetfulness is the best thing that can happen to
me now. I realize that in my sensible moments. But it