“Yes—I know,” he nodded, his arm on her shoulder. Neither said more for a space. Presently he told her, “I’ve had luck out there. I have been recommended for a commission.”
“I think I like this best,” the girl said, stroking his sleeve. “But it’s splendid that you’ve won through the ranks. That’s the kind of commission worth having—the only kind.”
“But I can’t accept it until I can tell them who I am. That’s why I got leave—to come back and try and clear myself. I didn’t know until I reached England that I had been published as a deserter—that there was a warrant for my arrest.”
“You didn’t know that?” Helen said, in her surprise rising to her feet.
“No—Uncle Dick promised to arrange matters—he must have died before he had the chance—of course he did—but I never thought of that. So now I’ve got to clear my name—of two pretty black things—or give myself up,” he said, rising and standing beside her, face to face.
She shuddered a little, and she could not keep all her anxiety out of her voice.
“And you think you can clear yourself? You have some plan?”
“Not a plan exactly,” he shook his head gropingly, “only a vague sort of—I don’t know what to call it.”
Helen was bitterly disappointed. “Why, what do you mean?” she asked wistfully.
“Helen,” he said awkwardly, diffidently. “You mustn’t think me quite mad—but I don’t know that I can make you understand—only—well—all these months out there—I have been haunted by an idea—oh! Helen, strange things have come to many of us out there—at night—in the trenches—lying by our guns waiting—in the thick of the fight even—things that will never be believed by those who didn’t see them—never forgotten, or doubted again, by those who did. I don’t know how it came to me—or when exactly—but somehow I came to believe that, yes, to know it, that, if I could come back to this room, I would find something to prove my innocence. I don’t know how, I didn’t know how, but the thing was so strong I couldn’t resist it.”