A stifled exclamation broke from Garth.
“To what end?” he burst out violently. “Can't you realize that's just the one thing in the world forbidden me? Sara is—oh, well, it's impossible to say what she is, but I suppose most good women are half angel. And if I gave her the smallest chance, she'd begin to believe in me again—to ask questions I cannot answer. . . . What's the use? I can't get away from the court-martial and all that followed. I can't clear myself. And I could never offer Sara anything more than a name that has been disgraced—a miserable half-life with a man who can't hold up his head amongst his fellows! Yes”—answering the unspoken question in Herrick's eyes—“I know what you're thinking—that I was willing to marry her once. But I believed, then, that—Garth Trent had cut himself free from the past. Now I know”—more quietly—“that there is no such thing as getting away from the mistakes one has made. . . . I'm tied hand and foot—every way! And it's better Sara should continue to think the worst of me. Then, in the future, she may find some sort of happiness—with Durward, perhaps.” His lips greyed a little, but he went on. “The worse she thinks me, the easier it will be for her to cut me out of her life.”
“Then do you mean”—Miles spoke very slowly—that you are—deliberately—holding back from soldiering?”
“Quite deliberately!” It was like the snap of a tormented animal, baited beyond bearing. “If I could go with a clean name, as other men can——Good God, man! Do you think I haven't thought it out—knocked my head against every stone wall in the whole damned business?”
Miles was silent. There was so much of truth in all Garth said, so much of warped vision, biased by the man's profound bitterness of soul, that he could find no answer.
After a moment Garth spoke again, jerkily, as though under pressure.
“There's my promise to Elisabeth, as well. That binds me if I were recognized and taxed with my identity. I should have to hold my peace—and stick it all over again! . . . There's a limit to a man's endurance.”
Then, after a pause: “If I could go—and be sure of not returning”—grimly—“I'd go to-morrow—the Foreign Legion, anyway. But sometimes a man hasn't even the right to get himself neatly killed out of the way.”
“What are you driving at now?”
“I should think it's plain enough! Don't you see what it would mean to Sara if—that—happened? She'd never believe—afterwards—that I'm as black as I'm painted, and I should saddle her with an intolerable burden of self-reproach. No, the Army is a closed door for me. . . . Damn it, Herrick!” with the sudden nervous violence of a man goaded past endurance. “Can't you understand? I ought never to have come into her life at all. I've only messed things up for her—damnably. The least I can do is to clear out of it so that she'll never regret my going. . . . I've gone under, and a man who's gone under had better stay there.”