“Because,” she said, “you are going to tell on yourself, Roy.”
“What!” he blurted out in angry astonishment.
“You are going to tell on yourself.... You are going back to your regiment.... It will be your own idea, too; it has been your own idea all the while—your secret desire every moment since you deserted——”
“Are you crazy!” he cried, aghast; “or do you think I am?”
“—ever since you deserted,” she went on, dark eyes looking deep into his, “it has been your desire to go back.... Fear held you; rage hardened your heart; dread of death as your punishment; angry brooding on what you believed was a terrible injustice done you—all these drove you to panic.... Don’t scowl at me: don’t say what is on your lips to say. You are only a tired, frightened boy—scarcely eighteen, are you? And at eighteen no heart can really be a traitor.”
“Traitor!” he repeated, losing all his angry color.
“It is a bad word, isn’t it, Roy? Lying hidden and starving in the forest through the black nights you had to fight that word away from you—drive it out of your half-crazed senses—often—didn’t you? Don’t you think I know, my boy, what a dreadful future you faced, lying there through the stifling nights while they hunted you to hang you?
“I know, also, that what you did you did in a moment of insane rage. I know that the moment it was done you would, in your secret soul, have given the world to have undone it.”
“No!” he cried. “I was right!”
She rose, walked to the door, and seated herself on the sill, looking up at the stars.