The Wounded Name

by D. K. Broster

"Poor Jacques!" she said again, the tears in her eyes. "Still, he might have been killed." And then, moved to it perhaps by what she saw in his sad, changed face, she said, with some of Aymar's own occasional vehemence, "And, anyhow, it is a thousand times worse for you—a thousand times!"

He caught his breath. Yes, but for whom was it going to be worst of all in the end—whom, at least, was he going to hurt most? The way, the desolating way before him, over her tender and faithful heart.

She was gazing at him with eyes of such compassion that he could hardly bear it; she was speaking, too. "Dearest, will you sit down for a moment—only for a moment? There is something that I must ask you before we start for home (especially if you have a companion) and I cannot have you standing, looking as you do."

She indicated the settle. He sat down. God knew what she was going to ask him; there would be so many things! She sat beside him and was about to put her hand on his arm, saw that it was bandaged, touched it instead with the lightest, most impalpable gesture of caress, and said, "I only want you to tell me this, if you are free to tell it. We have heard rumours . . . almost more than rumours . . . that your defeat at Pont-aux-Rochers was due to treachery. Oh, Aymar, say that it is not true!"

Aymar put his head back in the corner of the highbacked settle and closed his eyes. But he answered firmly, "No, it is not true. There was no treachery. But you will hear it said everywhere, Avoye." Should he tell her more? She would have to know it—unless indeed she knew it already. . . . It became for an instant a question as to whether he could tell her. . . .

"What is the matter?" she asked, with alarm in her voice.

So then he had to go on. He opened his eyes. "And you will hear some say that the treachery was . . . mine!"

"Aymar!"

"You had not heard that yet? . . . I will tell you the reason directly I can. Only you will recognize, Avoye, that with this stain on my honour, I cannot regard myself at present as . . . as what I was at no time worthy to be. . . ."

His will uttered the words, because his will had always intended that they should be uttered, but as he said them it seemed to him as if all the blood left him was being drained out of his body.