The mocking quality in his tones stung her into open accusation.
“She told me that you had been court-martialled and cashiered from the Army—for cowardice.” The words came slowly, succinctly.
“Ah—h!” He drew his breath sharply, and a grey shadow seemed to spread itself over his face.
Sara waited—waited with an intensity of longing that was well-nigh unendurable—for either the indignant denial or the easy, mirthful scorn wherewith an innocent man might be expected to answer such a charge.
But there came neither of these. Only silence—an endless, agonizing silence, while Garth stood utterly motionless, looking at her, his face slowly greying.
It was impossible to interpret the expression of his eyes. There was neither anger, nor horror, nor pleading in their cool indomitable stare, but only a hard, bright impenetrability, shuttering the soul behind it from the aching gaze of the woman who waited.
In that silence, Sara's flickering hope that the accusation might prove false went out in blinding darkness. She knew, now—knew it as certainly as though Garth had answered her—that he was unable to deny it. Still, she would brace herself to hear it—to endure the ultimate anguish of words.
“Is it true?” she questioned him. “Is it true that you were—cashiered for cowardice?”
At last he spoke.
“Yes,” he said. “It is true.” His voice was altogether passionless, but something had come into his face, into his whole attitude, which denied the calm passivity of his reply. The soul of the man—a soul in ineffable extremity of suffering—was struggling for expression, striving against the rigid bonds of the motionless body in which his iron will constrained it.