“I'm afraid I can give you no other answer to that question.”
A light like the tender, tremulous shining of dawn broke across Sara's face.
“Then you weren't guilty!” she exclaimed, and there was a deep, surpassing joy in her shaken tones. “I knew it! I was sure of it. Oh! Garth, Garth, what a fool I've been! And oh! My dear, why did you do it? Why did you let me go on thinking you—what it almost killed me to think?”
He stared down at her with wondering, uncertain eyes.
“But I've just told you that I can't deny it!”
She smiled at him—a smile of absolute content, with a gleam of humour at the back of it.
“I didn't ask you to deny it. I asked you to own to it; I tried to make you—every way. And you can't!”
“But—”
She laid her hand across his mouth—laughing the tender, triumphant laughter of a woman who has won, and knows that she has.
“You needn't blacken yourself any longer on my account, Garth. I shall never again believe anything that you may say against—the man I love.”