isks
attached to it."

Sara experienced a revulsion of feeling; she had not expected Elisabeth
to be of the fearful type of woman. Women of splendid physique and
abounding vitality are rarely obsessed by craven apprehensions.

"I don't think the risks would count with Tim," she said warmly. "He has
any amount of pluck." And then she stared at Elisabeth in amazement.
A sudden haggardness had overspread the elder woman's face, the faint
shell-pink that usually flushed her cheeks draining away and leaving
them milk-white.

"Yes," she replied in stifled tones. "I don't suppose Tim's a coward.
But"--more lightly--"I think I am. I--don't think I care for the Army as
a profession. Tim is my only child," she added self-excusingly. "I can't
let him run risks--of any kind."

As she spoke, an odd foreboding seized hold of Sara. It was as though
the secret dread of _something_--she could not tell what--which held the
mother had communicated itself to her.

She shivered. Then, the impression fading as quickly as it had come, she
spoke defiantly, as if trying to reassure herself.

"There aren't many risks in these piping times of peace. Soldiers don't
die in battle nowadays; they retire on a pension."

"Die in battle! Did you think I was afraid of that?" There was a sudden
fierce contempt in Elisabeth's voice.

Sara looked at her with astonishment.

"Weren't you?" she said hesitatingly.

Elisabeth seemed about to make some passionate rejoinder. Then, all
at once, she checked herself, and again Sara was conscious of that
curiously secretive expression in her eyes, as though she were on guard.

"There are many things worse than death," she said evasively, and
deliberately turned the conversation into other channels.

During the days that followed, Sara became aware of a faintly
perceptible difference in her relations with Elisabeth. The latter was
still just as charming as ever, but she seemed, in some inexplicable
way, to have set a limit to their intimacy--defined a boundary line
which she never intended to be overstepped.

It was as though she felt that she had allowed Sara to approach too
nearly some inner sanctum which she had hitherto guarded securely
from all intrusion, and now hastened to erect a barricade against a
repetition of the offence.

More than once, lately, Sara had broached the subject of her impending
departure from Barrow, only to have the suggestion incontinently brushed
aside by Major Durward, w