e so much made him cruel to
you. Oh, don't look at me like that. You turn me to ice. It's
true--'cruel' isn't a hard enough word for what he did. I don't try to
excuse him. But he sinned for my sake. That softens my heart toward him.
I'm human!"

"I'm not inhuman, I trust," said Eagle, "but it doesn't soften _my_
heart toward him."

"I don't ask that," Diana wept. "All I ask is your forgiveness for
me--that you soften your heart for me!"

"I forgive you freely, Lady Diana," Eagle answered, "for any injury you
may have done me in the past, for I have lived it down. The injury
Vandyke did me, I thought--till to-night--I could never live down. But
thanks to the most loyal friend a man ever had I've been given my
chance."

Diana flung up her head, and there were no tears in her eyes. "Peggy a
loyal friend!" she cried. "She's a traitor to Father and me when she
betrays Sidney. What right has she to be loyal to you at our expense?
And it isn't loyalty, not what _you_ mean by loyalty. She has always
hated Sidney for your sake, and now she can calmly see him ruined, not
because of any wish for justice, but simply because she's desperately,
idiotically in love with you; because she'd do anything--no matter how
cruel to others--in the hope of winning you for herself. Now you know
the real truth about Peggy."

"I wish I could think it were the real truth," said Eagle very quietly
and very slowly. "To have Peggy's love would be the best thing in the
world. I've realized that for some time now--while I was under arrest
before my court-martial and had plenty of time to think. That was the
time it was borne in on me, Lady Diana, just how much difference there
is between you and Peggy."

Diana stood speechless, staring at him.

I was afraid the two out there might hear my heartbeats, they sounded so
loudly in my own ears.

"I realized how foolish I'd been, not to see that difference before,"
Eagle went on, still speaking with a deliberate distinctness, as if he
were willing I should catch every word.

That he should be saying such things to Diana was so wonderful, so
almost incredible, that I asked myself if he were saying them only to
save my pride because Di had snatched my love for him out of hiding and
trailed it in the dust at his feet. "I ought to have loved Peggy almost
as much as I love her now, the very day we met first. I ought to have
felt she was the _one_ woman--the one thing in the world for me. But she
looke