The recollection of that one perfect moment, when the serene austerity of his face had given the lie to that of which he was accused, lingered with her, a faint elusive thread of hope which would not leave her, urging, suggesting, combating the hard facts to which he himself had given ruthless confirmation.
Almost without her cognizance, Sara's characteristic, vehement belief in whomsoever she loved—stunned at the first moment of Elisabeth's revelation—had been gradually creeping back to feeble, halting life, weakened at times by the mass of evidence arrayed against it, yet still alive—growing and strengthening secretly within her as an unborn babe grows and strengthens.
And since that moment on the moor, when her eyes had searched Garth's face—his face with the mask off—the dormant belief within her had sprung into conscious knowledge.
Throughout the long hours of the night she had fought against it, deeming it but the passionate outcome of her love for the man himself. She wanted to believe him innocent; it was only her love for him which had raised this phantom doubt of the charges brought against him; the wish had been father to the thought. So she told herself, struggling conscientiously against that to which she longed to yield.
And then, making a mockery of the hateful thing of which he had been accused, her individual knowledge of Garth himself rose up and confronted her accusingly.
Nothing that she had ever known of him had pointed to any lack of courage. It had been on no sudden, splendid impulse of a moment that he had plunged into the sea and fought that treacherous, racing tide off Devil's Hood Island. Quite composedly, deliberately, he had calculated the risks—and taken them!
Once more, she recalled the vision of his face as she had seen it yesterday, in that instant before he had perceived her nearness to him—strong and steadfast, imprinted with a disciplined nobility—and the repudiation of his dishonour leapt spontaneously from her lips.
“He didn't do it!”
She had spoken involuntarily, the thought rushing into words before she was aware, and the sound of her own voice in the darkness startled her. It seemed almost like a voice from some Otherwhere, authoritatively assuring her of all she had ached to believe.
She lay back on her pillows, smiling a little at the illusion. But the sense of peace, of blessed assuredness, remained with her. She had struggled through the darkness of those bitter months of unbelief, and now she had come out into the light on the other side. She felt dreamily contented and at rest, and presently she fell asleep, trustfully, as a little child may sleep, the smile still on her lips.