"Who—where?"
"Ensign Ronald!"
"I—I don't know," he stammered.
He had told the unvarnished truth, but she interpreted it in her own way. "I'll tell you why you didn't go," she said, with measured distinctness. Then her eyes flashed and her breast heaved.
"Coward!" she blazed.
Robert started as if he had been struck, but before he could speak, she had left him and gone back to Queen.
Her lip curled as she saw him standing there, leaning on his musket, with his head bowed. His habit of self-analysis asserted itself, and he began to wonder whether she had been right. The blood that had left his heart came back in tides of pain, and the word burned itself upon his consciousness. "Coward," he said to himself, "coward! She called me a coward!"
Yet he knew that what she had said did not matter so much as the possibility that she had spoken truly—that his self-respect meant more than any woman's praise or blame. His reason told him that; but her scornful, accusing face flitted before him and he had an impulse to get away—it did not matter where. Still dazed, he went to the blockhouse at the north-west corner of the stockade and joined the men there.
On the parade-ground Doctor Norton was making grewsome preparations. A stretcher was placed near each blockhouse, and others at regular intervals. Bottles were ranged in rows upon the ground, and piles of bandages showed whitely under the flare of the torches.
He looked up, to find Katherine at his side. "Let me help you," she said.