"Or your wife--what would you have had her do ?" Her voice--the gentleness of her touch, sent his mind flashing back to that other tragic moment in a little cabin far north, when he had almost killed a man, and for less than this that he had heard and seen.

It seemed, for an instant, as though the voice so near to him was coming, faintly, pleadingly, from that other woman at Lac Bain--the woman who had almost caused a tragedy similar to this, only with the sexes changed.

He would have excused Colonel Becker for killing Bucky Nome, for defending his own honor and his wife's.

And here--now--was a woman who had fought and killed for her own honor, and to save her husband.
His sister--his wife--Would he have had them do this?
Would he have Mrs.
Becker, the woman he loved, defend her honor as this woman had defended hers?
Would he not have loved her ten times--a hundred times--more for doing so?
He rose to his feet, making an effort to steel himself against the justice of what he had seen--against the glory of love, of womanhood, of triumph which he saw shining in her eyes.
"I understand now," he said.

"You had me brought here--in this way--that I might hear what was said, and use it as evidence.