tingly, and she would
shrink with loathing from the thought that she had given her love to a
man who had been convicted of that very thing.

Nor was the attitude he had assumed in regard to the war calculated
to placate her. She had learned from Molly that he had abstained from
taking up any form of war-work whatsoever. He appeared to be utterly
indifferent to the need of the moment, and the whole of Monkshaven
buzzed with patriotic disapprobation of his conduct. There were few
idle hands there now. A big munitions factory had been established at
Oldhampton, and its demands, added to the necessities of the hospital,
left no loophole of excuse for slackers.

Sara reflected bitterly that the sole courage of which Garth seemed
possessed was a kind of cold, moral courage--brazen-facedness, the
townspeople termed it--which enabled him to refuse doggedly to be driven
out of Monkshaven, even though the whole weight of public opinion was
dead against him.

And then the recollection of that day on Devil's Hood Island, when he
had deliberately risked his life to save her reputation, would return to
her with overwhelming force--mocking the verdict of the court-martial,
repudiating the condemnation which had made her thrust him out of her
life.

So the pendulum swung, this way and that, lacerating her heart each time
it swept forward or back. But the blind agony of her recoil, when she
had first learned the story of that tragic happening on the Indian
frontier, was passed.

Then, overmastered by the horror of the thing, she had flung violently
away from Garth, feeling herself soiled and dishonoured by the mere fact
of her love for him, too revolted to contemplate anything other than the
severance of the tie between them as swiftly as possible.

Now, with the widened sympathies and understanding which the past year
of intimacy with human nature at its strongest, and at its weakest, had
brought her, new thoughts and new possibilities were awaking within her.

The furnace--that fiercely burning furnace of life at its intensest--had
done its work.

CHAPTER XXXII

ON CRABTREE MOOR

"Tim is wounded, and has been recommended for the Military Cross."

Sara made the double announcement quite calmly. The two things so often
went together--it was the grey and gold warp and waft of war with which
people had long since grown pathetically familiar.

"How splendid!" Molly enthused with sparkling eyes, adding quickly, "I
hope h