[Since the interest of this story is enhanced by the circumstances under which it was written, it is worth while to quote from the letter which accompanied the manuscript to the Atlantic office.

‘In the year 1912,’ writes Mr. Dawson, ‘I found, in a drawer of my desk, some sheets, written in my hand, which were unfamiliar to me. My first idea was that I had copied out a story by somebody else. Reading brought no associations, yet I recognized, not only my writing, but my thoughts, my characterization, and my story-form. On the last page was my signature, with the date "15th April, 1911.” With the help of this date, and my diary, and of a very accurate,memory when I get started on a clue, I presently patched out the whole affair. On the night of the 14th-15th April, 1911, I woke up from a dream in which I had seen this story vividly acted. I was so possessed by it that I got up, dressed summarily, went to my study, and wrote the story as it had come. It was a cold night; there was no fire in my study; I wrote for several hours, and was shaking in a severe chill by the time I had finished. Going back to bed, I next woke up with a high fever, and was ill for many weeks with neuralgic grippe. This illness effaced all recollection of my night-adventure, until I chanced upon the evidence of it.

‘Meanwhile, the great Franco-German crisis of August, 1911, had come and gone —four months after I had written this story expressing the Gallic spirit versus the Teutonic. Being struck by its prophetic quality, I copied out the manuscript and tried it with a number of magazines. Everywhere it was scornfully or indignantly refused. It was incompatible with the “ humanitarian” conditions of war prescribed by the Hague Convention, and I was iniquitous for daring to conceive anything so “ brutal.” But I happened to be at the 1907 Hague Convention, and to have my opinion of its sincerity. In my official journalistic connection, I was not allowed to tell the truth, because at that time the American public declined to know the truth. Fortunately, one brief record of my opinion, in the form of a letter to the editor of an American newspaper, remains in print to spare me the vagueness of verbal evidence.’]

THEY brought him, with tight-bound hands and blood-stained face, into the presence of the Officer; they placed on the camp-table a packet of papers taken from his person; and they stood ready to answer and to act.

The Officer, not heeding the men, looked curiously at the Man.

‘You are as proud as if spying were counted among the honorable professions,’ he sneered.

‘Scouting is,’ the Man replied, unmoved. ‘My present profession is the same as yours; only you, not being in the ranks, have power to send others out on work you might not care for yourself. An instrument does fine or ugly work, but the hand that guides it cannot be held blameless.’

‘You think to hasten your end by angering me,’ the Officer said, observing the other with increased attention. ‘You are unwise.’ He stopped before adding with cold precision, ‘Lives are sometimes saved in desperate straits.’ The Man shrugged scornfully.

‘I have learned enough of the trade of war to understand you. I may scout in the enemy’s country, but I don’t betray my people.’

‘You speak with a firmness which seems final,’ returned the Officer.

His eyes for the first time left the prisoner to seek the papers. There was a long silence, broken only by a rustling as his lean white fingers turned the sheets. He addressed three swift questions to the guard, appeared to know the answers before he received them, and in an altered tone, less scathing if no less severe than before, he spoke to the Man.

‘You are not a soldier.’

‘I am a soldier,’ the Man protested.

‘ A soldier would have expressed himself more aptly and less well. You lack technical terms, and furthermore, you dare not trust your memory. These papers leave you no hope.’

‘I asked for none.’ The Man did not flinch.

‘You are not a soldier, though you have the boldness of one. You will need that boldness, to die a shameful death. A pity, too. This is the work of a brain trained to observe, to analyze, and to conclude. Even so big and so new a task could not baffle you. Yes — big and new. If these papers did not reveal as much, two phrases which escaped you would suffice: a remark about learning the trade of war, and a reference to your present profession.”

The Officer gave a command. One of the guard saluted and left the tent.

‘Before the end can come, the moments which must pass will seem infernally long to you,’ said the Officer. ‘That is, they will if you are left to your regrets. Now, words spoken here and written there have roused my curiosity. Shall we have a little idle talk? It would not be treachery for you to answer a simple question as to who you are.’

Then the Man flinched.

‘Ah!’ thought the Officer. ‘Fear of discovery is the weak spot.’

Soldiers were heard tramping without; there followed an order to halt, a shuffling of feet, and a rattle of arms. The Officer’s face had been enveloped in a species of intellectual mist, like that of artificial attainment, as he tried to draw the prisoner’s confidences. The mist passed, and a grim, evil look shone in its stead.

‘The time was even shorter than I estimated,’ he said. ‘If you wish prompt release — such as it is — I shall not insist upon detaining you. Yet I am privileged. I am the cousin of the lord commander-in-chief. ’

The Man started, and shrank back. Thereupon the soldiers seized him roughly and held him, waiting for a word from the Officer. The latter did not move. Presently the prisoner raised his head. An inspired ray was in his eyes, though his flesh had grown white under the savage grip of his captors.

‘If, by telling you, I can buy permission to ask a favor, I am willing.’ The words had come slowly; but, reading amused scorn in the face before him, he cried passionately, ‘No! It’s not my life. That is already disposed of.’

‘Tell me who you are — and you may then ash whatever you wish.’

The Officer gave a new command. The guard relinquished their hold so suddenly, so hatefully, that the prisoner fell to his knees. They grinned at his discomfiture, and marched out, halting near the firing squad which still waited at the entrance of the tent.

The Man rested for some instants as he had fallen. His muscles were like unstrung cords quivering without response. Weakly, uncertainly, he rose, lost his balance, fell once more, and strained with bound hands cast helplessly behind him. He struggled to his feet and stood, wavering. A stain of blood was blotted upon his knee. A cut on the forehead, where one of his captors had struck him, had burst open and streamed a thin red line down his cheek, down his breast, to the freshwounded knee, there gathering tribute and falling in swift drops to the ground.

The Officer had placed his pistol on the papers; he watched it fondly, and touched it once or twice, humming in a harsh, untuned voice a fragment of refrain. A suggestion of the ill-omened inner light still hovered in his look. But the intellectual mists enveloped him as he spoke.

‘Your trade is thought, not war. I am interested in thought. War is a game, a science, a fascination to which I have devoted my life; it has not prevented me from being something of a thinker, or at least a dealer in others’ thoughts — I mean, a reader.’

As the Officer stopped, the Man began quickly, —

‘You asked who I am? It is what I am that matters. You are right, I was bred for thought and the expression of thought. But when the call to arms came, I responded gladly, though my means as a warrior were poor.’

‘We need complete frankness, or we are wasting time. Yours is precious,’ said the Officer. ‘Listen.’

The soldiers at rest could be heard talking with one another — talking and jesting till they should fulfill their mission of death. The Officer spoke again:

‘ I said I was a reader. I add that I am a reader of yours.’

A second time the Man flinched.

‘When you were brought in, only your bearing impressed me,’ said the Officer. ‘But the writing on these sheets presents analogies with one of the most valued manuscripts in my collection. The style here shows those qualities of detached observation, profound penetration, and logical deduction, and particularly that fair balance of judgment which the ignorant term paradox: all characteristic of the author of that manuscript. Beneath the dirt and blood which disfigure you, I recognize features made familiar by photographs. So that I need not ask again who you are. But, on your side, you need not express your petition in words. I understand. If you have flinched only when the question of identity was raised, it’s because you wish to die unknown among us. It’s because you wish hero-worshipers to think of you falling gloriously in the open field — with less lead in your chest and no more mud in your mouth than we are about to give you. Such are the little vanities of the great. Well, I grant your request. What does your secret matter to the military man who holds all the evidence he needs to have you executed as a spy ? The reader will still have your books — with this touch of human nature added.’

‘No, you have not understood — not understood my wishes any more than my works! What I ask for is — one more night of work.’

The Officer frowned.

‘ This is not within the bounds of reason. How can I know that to-morrow may not find me in your place, if I allow you still to have a place? Our armies occupy your country, there are enemies for us behind every bush.’

The Man continued as if the other had not spoken,—

‘ If I die to-night, neither you nor the world will ever hold the key to my thought.’

Wounded pride of artificial intellect brought back the evil gleam to the Officer’s eyes.

‘ Are you not wasting your efforts on one so obtuse?’ he asked. ‘Unless you consider that your vocation as an artist gives you an advantage in expressing things.’

‘In feeling them, rather,’ returned the Man quickly. ‘ Only the artist who feels truly may speak truly. And even then, it’s only “may.” ’

‘There I should recognize you, if nothing else had betrayed you,’ observed the Officer. ‘ All this confident talk of yours about art! Why, if art had the influence you pretend, it would convince every one — and you must admit that it does not.’

‘I admit that a sunbeam awakes rainbow glories in the heart of clear crystal, but can obtain no more than a superficial glitter from coal.'

Having said this, the Man plunged into the silence of one who has gladly renounced life rather than recant.

But the Officer, although frowning fiercely, made no hostile movement. hen he spoke, it was because he perceived that the Man would not speak again.

‘ You are arguing rather than meet me fairly.'

‘Arguing!’ the Man burst out with the full violence of a last aggression. ‘What do I care for argument? The tricks of casuistry can conceal from limited visions the truths of eternity — but what is altered? Only the nature which has preferred illusions! You may prove argumentatively that the bird would have been better if born a fish, or the fish if born a bird. But the wise bird makes the best of being a bird, the wise fish of being a fish.'

‘And the wise artist of being an artist,’added the Officer. ‘ It is not for you to moralize or philosophize, but only to please.'

‘To please? Please whom, with what? Just please? Then a Rembrandt becomes art because it pleases the cultured, and a vile caricature becomes art because it pleases the vulgar? Or, if you would distinguish, what but sheer arbitrariness can draw the line, where all is to depend upon pleasing? Would a marble of Praxiteles, a tragedy of Shakespeare, a symphony of Beethoven be art while you and I remain in this tent and are pleased by them — only to cease to be art when your soldiers step in who are pleased by beer and beef? Take art to be a mere principle of sensations and emotions: then the sublime and the degraded must be placed on one same plane, since the lofty will respond to the first and the base to the second!’

The sunlight, where it pierced through the slits in the tent close to the ground, had taken clearer, sharper, longer shapes some minutes before, but was now faded and wavering where it had not already vanished. A sudden breeze shook the canvas as if in reminder that night was near.

‘ What would you do with this night of work?’ asked the Officer. ‘It is impossible, But my curiosity is roused.’ ‘I should prove that I have done more than please while pleasing, since this is but a means for the artist who has an aim himself and sees an aim for life. Let me die at this sunset, and I pass away with those who seemed to have labored but to please. Let me die at next sunrise, and I achieve the work which justifies the rest; I complete a cycle of life, though a short life. Let me work for ten hours — a very trifle, even in our earthly existence — and my influence stands a chance to endure, influence which alone is eternal among men’s activities, influence which links one generation to another and to all others when the works through which it was manifested have long since disappeared from the conscious memory of man! ’

‘And you imagine such papers could leave this camp?’

‘You would keep them, with those you have just seized, until my people have imposed reason upon yours. If you are a thinker as you believe, you will understand.'

‘Do you realize what you are asking? ’

‘ Yes — and also that you are the cousin of the lord commander-in-chief.’

The intellectual misthad closed in upon the Officer. He was dreaming idly, self-contentedly, beyond the reach of subtlety or flatteries; when he reacted, it would be in response to the inbred mechanism of war.

The Man sealed his fate.

‘ Will you help me to immortality and have your share in that — or must your blindness bring you notoriety? Yes, I know what I ask, and of whom I ask it. For you are of those who would melt a painter’s masterpiece with alcohol drop by drop, and then triumph in proclaiming that where there is no resistance there was never art!’

‘You shall have your night of work! ’ shouted the Officer.

His voice was so loud and fierce that the guards rushed into the tent. He gave a few sharp orders; then halted, silent, with turned back, as the Man was led out.

Those who kept watch said, later, that the prisoner wrote all through the night, giving the moist pages one by one to soldiers standing there to receive them. They thought that he had bought life with treason, and watched with scorn. He, heedful of naught but his task, wrote on.

Dawn came and found him still writing, his face gray, his eyes haggard, his hand all but useless. As the pen traced its last word, it rolled from his grasp, and he fainted. They raised him, they struck him. He was barely conscious when the tramp of the firing squad drew near. At that, he braced himself, and strode firmly to the place of execution. The soldiers, their suspicions stilled since he was about to die, whispered among themselves, ‘He is brave.’ An inspired light radiated from his face; he stood waiting for death as for apotheosis. The soldiers took aim; his face became angelic.

But there was a pause. The Officer approached. He held the pages just written; he stopped close to the weakly flickering camp-fire and addressed the Man: —

‘ You have had all I promised you — a last night of work. Take it with you as credentials for immortality!’

And he tossed the leaves into the flames.

He turned away. The lightning flash of a falling sword cleaved the air, and rifles roared in unison. But the heart of the Man had already ceased to beat; the lead poured into an inert form which fell of its own accord, yearning toward the ashes of lost inspiration.

That night, the position was stormed and taken. That night, the Officer was freed alike from evil gleams and deceptive mists. Among his papers, those who had beaten him in his own vocation of arms found little to interest them from a military point of view. Only they puzzled over certain pages written in their own language and telling a tale of art, on which a foreigner had put annotations suggesting strategy.

Some said these pages were written by a missing comrade who had toiled thus after many a weary day while they rested heavily, and who had said the morning before that with one more night he would finish his task. They identified him as the Man whose body lay in the starlight at the edge of the encampment. They noted with horror that, executed as a spy, he bore traces on a withered right hand as if tried by an ordeal of fire. And they marveled that his face, serene and upturned, yet seemed to smile toward infinite worlds in the heavens.