listeners, keyed
up by its tragic drama, could visualize for themselves the scene of that
last piteous interview between Elisabeth and the man who had loved her
to his own utter undoing.

She was still a very lovely woman, and it was easy to realize how
well-nigh bewilderingly beautiful she must have been in her youth,
easy to imagine how Garth--or Maurice Kennedy, as he must henceforth be
recognized--worshipping her with a boy's headlong passion, had agreed
to let the judgment of the Court remain unchallenged and to shoulder the
burden of another man's sin.

Probably he felt that, since he had lost her, nothing else mattered,
and, with the reckless chivalry of youth, he never stopped to count the
cost. He only knew that the woman he loved, whose beauty pierced him to
the very soul, so that his vision was blurred by the sheer loveliness
of her, demanded her happiness at his hands and that he must give it to
her.

"I suppose you think there was no excuse for what I did," Elisabeth
concluded, with something of appeal in her voice. "But I did not
realize, then, quite all that I was taking from Maurice. I think that
much must be granted me. . . . But I make no excuse for what I did
afterwards. There is none. I did it deliberately. Maurice had won the
woman Tim wanted, and I hoped that if he were utterly discredited, Sara
would refuse to marry him, and thus the way would be open to Tim. So I
made public the story of the court-martial which had sentenced Maurice.
Had it not been for that, I should have held my peace for ever about
his having been cashiered. I--I owed him that much." She was silent a
moment. Presently she raised her head and spoke in harsh, wrung accents.
"But I've been punished! God saw to that. What do you think it has meant
to me to know that my husband--the man I worshipped--had been once a
coward? It's true the world never knew it . . . but I knew it."

The agony of pride wounded in its most sacred place, the suffering of
love that despises what it loves, yet cannot cease from loving, rang in
her voice, and her haunted eyes--the eyes which had guarded their secret
so invincibly--seemed to plead for comfort, for understanding.

It was Miles who answered that unspoken supplication.

"I think you need never feel shame again," he said very gently. "Major
Durward's splendid death has more than wiped out that one mistake of his
youth. Thank God he never knew it needed wiping out."

A momentary tranquil