“I dare say,” he assured her with forced conviction, “that your father is right.”
There was a brief silence between them while the warm stillness of the woods breathed its incense and its langour, then the girl broke out impulsively:
“I want to see and hear and taste everything, out there!”
Her hands swept outward with an all-embracing gesture toward the whole of the unknown. “There aren’t any words to tell how I want it! What do you want more than anything else, Jack?”
The man remained silent for a little, studying her under half-lowered lids while a smile hovered at the corners of his lips. But the smile died abruptly and it was with deep seriousness that he answered.
“I think, more than anything else, I want a clean name and a vindicated reputation.”
Glory’s eyes widened so that their violet depths became 121 pools of wondering color and her lips parted in surprise.
“A clean name!” she echoed incredulously. “What blight have you got on it, Jack?” Then catching herself up abruptly she flushed crimson and said apologetically: “That’s a question I haven’t any license to put to you, though. Only you broached the subject yourself.”
“And having broached it, I am willing to pursue it,” he assured her evenly. “I was an army officer until I was charged with unprovoked murder—and court-martialed; dishonorably discharged from the service in which my father and grandfather had lived and died.”
For a moment or two she made no answer but her quick expressiveness of lip and eye did not, even for a startled interval, betray any shock of horror. When she did speak it was in a voice so soft and compassionate that the man thought of its quality before he realized its words.