es one has made. . . . I'm tied
hand and foot--every way! And it's better Sara should continue to
think the worst of me. Then, in the future, she may find some sort of
happiness--with Durward, perhaps." His lips greyed a little, but he went
on. "The worse she thinks me, the easier it will be for her to cut me
out of her life."

"Then do you mean"--Miles spoke very slowly--that you
are--deliberately--holding back from soldiering?"

"Quite deliberately!" It was like the snap of a tormented animal,
baited beyond bearing. "If I could go with a clean name, as other men
can----Good God, man! Do you think I haven't thought it out--knocked my
head against every stone wall in the whole damned business?"

Miles was silent. There was so much of truth in all Garth said, so much
of warped vision, biased by the man's profound bitterness of soul, that
he could find no answer.

After a moment Garth spoke again, jerkily, as though under pressure.

"There's my promise to Elisabeth, as well. That binds me if I were
recognized and taxed with my identity. I should have to hold my
peace--and stick it all over again! . . . There's a limit to a man's
endurance."

Then, after a pause: "If I could go--and be sure of not
returning"--grimly--"I'd go to-morrow--the Foreign Legion, anyway. But
sometimes a man hasn't even the right to get himself neatly killed out
of the way."

"What are you driving at now?"

"I should think it's plain enough! Don't you see what it would mean to
Sara if--that--happened? She'd never believe--afterwards--that I'm as
black as I'm painted, and I should saddle her with an intolerable burden
of self-reproach. No, the Army is a closed door for me. . . . Damn
it, Herrick!" with the sudden nervous violence of a man goaded past
endurance. "Can't you understand? I ought never to have come into her
life at all. I've only messed things up for her--damnably. The least I
can do is to clear out of it so that she'll never regret my going. . . .
I've gone under, and a man who's gone under had better stay there."

Both men were silent--Trent with the bitter, brooding silence of a man
who has battered uselessly against the bars that hem him in, and who at
last recognizes that they can never be forced asunder, Herrick trying to
focus his vision to that of the man beside him.

"No"--Garth spoke with a finality there was no disputing--"I've been
buried three-and-twenty years, and my resurrection hasn't been exactly a
success.