ith a
slightly questioning inflection. Nothing more.

Sara twisted her hands together. There was something unapproachable
about Garth as he stood there--quiet, inflexible, waiting to hear what
she had to say to him.

With an effort she began again.

"She has told me of something--something that happened to you, in the
past."

"Yes? Quite a great deal happened--in my past. What was it, in
particular, that she told you?"

The mocking quality in his tones stung her into open accusation.

"She told me that you had been court-martialled and cashiered from the
Army--for cowardice." The words came slowly, succinctly.

"Ah--h!" He drew his breath sharply, and a grey shadow seemed to spread
itself over his face.

Sara waited--waited with an intensity of longing that was well-nigh
unendurable--for either the indignant denial or the easy, mirthful scorn
wherewith an innocent man might be expected to answer such a charge.

But there came neither of these. Only silence--an endless, agonizing
silence, while Garth stood utterly motionless, looking at her, his face
slowly greying.

It was impossible to interpret the expression of his eyes. There was
neither anger, nor horror, nor pleading in their cool indomitable stare,
but only a hard, bright impenetrability, shuttering the soul behind it
from the aching gaze of the woman who waited.

In that silence, Sara's flickering hope that the accusation might
prove false went out in blinding darkness. She _knew_, now--knew it as
certainly as though Garth had answered her--that he was unable to deny
it. Still, she would brace herself to hear it--to endure the ultimate
anguish of words.

"Is it true?" she questioned him. "Is it true that you were--cashiered
for cowardice?"

At last he spoke.

"Yes," he said. "It is true." His voice was altogether passionless, but
something had come into his face, into his whole attitude, which
denied the calm passivity of his reply. The soul of the man--a soul
in ineffable extremity of suffering--was struggling for expression,
striving against the rigid bonds of the motionless body in which his
iron will constrained it.

Sara could sense it--a tormented flame shut in a casing of steel--and
she was swept by a torrent of uttermost pity and compassion.

"Garth! Garth! But there must have been some explanation! . . . You
weren't in your right senses at the moment. Ah! Tell me----" She broke
off, her voice failing her, her arms outflung in a pas