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Suddenly his knees gave way and he toppled backward to the ground. The silvery moonlight disclosed a dark flood welling from his severed jugular. With the utmost coolness José ran two fingers down his wet blade, snapped the fingers in air, and spoke to his crew: "As I said, we shall have a new popero. To-morrow, Julio, you will take the platform." A rumble ran among the men.
But it also carries him at times into the other's personality, so that he finds himself thinking thoughts that are not his own, using phrases which he has unconsciously borrowed, writing, it may be, as nearly like his long-studied original as Julio Romano's painting was like Raphael's; and all this with the unquestioning conviction that he is talking from his own consciousness in his own natural way.
He was really affected at thinking of what must be Karl's despair. But then, as soon as he was alone, a selfish coldness would blot out this compassion. War was war, and the Germans had sought it. France had to defend herself, and the more enemies fell the better. . . . The only soldier who interested him now was Julio.
One of Don Marcelo's pet occupations was to make his son tell about the encounter in which he had been hurt. No visitor ever came to see the sub-lieutenant but the father always made the same petition. "Tell us how you were wounded. . . . Explain how you killed that German captain." Julio tried to excuse himself with visible annoyance. He was already surfeited with his own history.
There was a large wound in his neck and another in his breast; his face was not in the least stained, and although it was covered by the pallor of death, his countenance wore a sweet, tranquil expression, as though he had gently fallen asleep. "Poor Signor Geronimo!" said Julio, sighing heavily. "Beauty! generosity! wealth! all fallen under the blade of a wretch! What is man's life?
I gave Julio a short item to the effect that Tom Kivelson, son of Captain and Mrs. Joe Kivelson, one of the Javelin survivors who had been burned in the tallow-wax fire, was now out of all danger, and recovering. Dad was able to scrounge that onto the first page. There was a lot of other news.
Then, Julio, raise your dying eyes to heaven, direct your last thoughts to Him who is the source of all mercy, and with full confidence let your soul wing its flight to the supreme tribunal. Already from the highest heaven God absolves the repentant sinner!" A triumphant hope illumined the countenance of Julio as he endeavored to raise his eyes to heaven.
The tearful eyes of her sister were raised at the same time as hers to the figure of the crucified Savior. "Lord, save my son!" . . . When uttering these words, Dona Luisa always saw Julio as he looked in a pale photograph which he had sent his father from the trenches with kepis and military cloak, a gun in his right hand, and his face shadowed by a growing beard.
He must be in the secrets of the destiny of his country, and that was enough to make them drink silently to the success of the war. Julio thought that the Counsellor and his admirers must be drunk. "Look here, Captain," he said in a conciliatory tone, "what you say lacks logic. How could war possibly be acceptable to industrial Germany?
"Wasn't that about the way of it?" Don Marcelo would always wind up. The son assented, desirous that his annoyance with the persistent story should come to an end as soon as possible. Yes, that was the way of it. But what the father didn't know, what Julio would never tell, was the discovery that he had made after killing the captain.
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