She stood there in silence, held. The radiance had all fallen from her. She was looking at him with something of the woe and reproach of a child for a cherished thing hurt.
"Why, Katie," he cried, "does it matter so? I thought it was only when we were in that we were so—impossible."
But she did not take the hands he stretched out. She was held.
It drove him desperate. "Well if that's so—if to have been in the army at all is a thing to make you look like that—Heaven knows," he threw in, "I don't blame you for despising us for fools!—But I don't know what you'll say when I tell you—"
"When you tell me—what?" she whispered.
"That I have no honorable discharge to lay at your feet. That I left your precious army through the noble gates of a military prison!"
She took a step backward, swaying. The anguish which mingled with the horror in her face made him cry: "Katie, let me tell you! Let me show you—"
But Katie, white-faced, was standing erect, braced for facing it. "What for? What did you do?"
Her voice was quick, sharp; tenseness made her seem arrogant. It roused something ugly in him. "I knocked down a cur of a lieutenant," he said, and laughed defiantly.
"You struck—an officer?"