"I forbid it, I tell you," said the General hotly.
There was a moment of tense silence and then Gordon, who had suddenly become hoarse, said—
"You spoke about a written order, General—give it to me."
"With pleasure!" said the General, and turning to his Military Secretary at the desk he requested him to make out an order in the Order Book according to the terms of his verbal command.
Nothing was heard in the silence of the next moment but the spasmodic scratching of Captain Graham's quill pen. The Consul-General sat motionless, and the Pasha merely smoothed one white hand over the other. Gordon tried to glance into Helena's face, but she looked fixedly before her out of her large, wide-open, swollen eyes.
Only one idea shaped itself clearly through the storm that raged in Gordon's brain—to secure his happiness with Helena he must make himself unhappy in every other relation of life—to save himself from degradation as a soldier he must degrade himself as a man.
Presently through the whirling mist of his half-consciousness he was aware that the Military Secretary had ceased writing, and that the General was offering him a paper.
"Here it is," the General was saying, with a certain bitterness. "Now you may set your mind at ease. If there are any bad consequences, you can preserve your reputation as an officer. And if there are any complaints from the War Office or anywhere else, you can lay the blame on me. You can go on with your duty without fear for your honour, and when——"
But Gordon, whose gorge had risen at every word, suddenly lost control of himself, and getting up with the paper in his hand he said—
"No, I will not go on. Do you suppose I have been thinking of myself? Take back your order. There is no obedience due to a sinful command, and this command is sinful. It is wicked, it is mad, it is abominable. You are asking me to commit murder—that's it—murder—and I will not commit it. There's your order—take it back and damn it!"