Bozard was concerned I should be dead. How could I be thus faithless to
her memory and my troth, and on the other hand, how could I discard the
woman who had risked all for me, and who, to speak truth, had grown so
dear to me, though there was one yet dearer? A hero or an angel might
find a path out of this tangle, but alas! I was neither the one nor the
other, only a man afflicted as other men are with human weakness, and
Otomie was at hand, and very sweet and fair. Still, almost I determined
that I would avail myself of her nobleness, that I would go back upon
my words, and beg her to despise me and see me no more, in order that
I might not be forced to break the troth that I had pledged beneath
the beech at Ditchingham. For I greatly dreaded this oath of life-long
fidelity which I should be forced to swear if I chose any other path.

Thus I thought on in pitiable confusion of mind, not knowing that all
these matters were beyond my ordering, since a path was already made
ready to my feet, which I must follow or die. And let this be a proof
of the honesty of my words, since, had I been desirous of glozing the
truth, I need have written nothing of these struggles of conscience, and
of my own weakness. For soon it was to come to this, though not by her
will, that I must either wed Otomie or die at once, and few would blame
me for doing the first and not the last. Indeed, though I did wed her, I
might still have declared myself to my affianced and to all the world as
a slave of events from which there was no escape. But it is not all the
truth, since my mind was divided, and had it not been settled for me, I
cannot say how the struggle would have ended.

Now, looking back on the distant past, and weighing my actions and
character as a judge might do, I can see, however, that had I found time
to consider, there was another matter which would surely have turned
the scale in favour of Otomie. De Garcia was among the Spaniards, and