Excerpt from The Judgment of Peace: A Novel With a sudden start he sprang up, smoothed the bed quickly and resumed his wandering about the room. No! By heaven, no! Had he sunk so low as to take moral refuge behind a woman? Was he to roll off the responsibility for his deeds upon his beloved? God knows, these were queer results of this institution for the training of men! It taught its pupils trembling and dread in the matter of buttons and chevrons and insignia to prepare them for an heroic mood! He drew himself up proudly and hurled the mean suspicion far from him. He himself was guilty and he alone. It was his insane ambition, his arrogance, his passion for always playing for the highest stakes that had driven him into this adventure. Had the war come a year earlier or a year later he would have reconsidered this step many times. Only in this special year, at this fatal moment, the temptation should not have come to him! About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.