The dark melancholy of Freemonte's normal gaze was a lot for a soft man such as Paylen to take on the brightest day. The captain's eyes seemed to be filled with an almost epic sorrow for the state of man and the joyless futility of living in these war torn times. They sparkled only when they looked on Josephine, with an almost mad hopeless glee that somehow scared Paylen even more. He was a man of book learning, wise enough to know that he was being over sensitive to the gaze of an old soldier no more sorrowful than any other war veteran but less quick to conceal than most. What he could not bear to think on was how much that grief might intensify when he heard the tale of tonight's betrayal, when he saw for himself the web of malice and treachery that his cunning wife had spun around them
