gh voice.

"Yes"--simply. "I had promised to marry him."

Sara was silent for a long moment. Then--

"He never told me," she muttered. "He never told me."

"No? It was hardly likely he would, was it? He couldn't tell you that
without telling you--the rest."

Sara made no answer. She felt stunned--beaten into helpless silence
by the quiet, inexorable voice that, bit by bit, minute by minute,
had drawn aside the veil of ignorance and revealed the dry bones and
rottenness that lay hidden behind it.

"I don't believe it!" she had cried in a futile effort to convince
herself by the sheer reiteration of denial. But she _did_ believe it,
nevertheless. The whole miserable story tallied too accurately with the
bitterly significant remarks that Garth himself had let fall from time
to time.

That day of the dog-fight, for instance. What was it he had said? "_A
certain amount of allowance must be made for nerves_."

And again: "_I suppose no man can be dead sure of himself--always_."

The implication was too horribly clear to be evaded.

He had told her, moreover, that he was a man who had made a shipwreck of
his life, that in a moment of folly--a moment of funk she knew now to be
the veridical description!--he had flung away the whole chances of
his life. The man whom she had loved, and, in her love, idealized, had
proved himself, when the test came, that most despicable of things, a
coward! The pain of realization was almost unbearable.

Suddenly, across the utter desolation of the moment there shot a single
ray of hope. She turned triumphantly to Elisabeth.

"But if it were true that Garth--had shown cowardice, why was he not
shot? They shoot men for cowardice"--grimly.

"There are many excuses to be made for him, Sara," replied Elisabeth
gently.

"Excuses! For cowardice!" The low-spoken words were icy with a biting
contempt. "I'm afraid I could not find them."

"The court-martial did, nevertheless. At the trial, the 'prisoner's
friend'--in this instance, Garth's colonel, who was very fond of him
and had always thought very highly of him--pleaded extenuating
circumstances. Garth's youth, his previous good record, the conditions
of the moment--the continuous mental and physical strain of the days
preceding his sudden loss of nerve--all these things were urged by
the 'prisoner's friend,' and the sentence was commuted to one of
cashiering."

"It would have been better if he had been shot," said Sara dully. Then