"But he is innocent!"
"That is not quite the point!" urged the general. "We must see things as they are. You must understand what it may mean to you in the future, to have given your love to a man who has fallen under such suspicion. There will always be those who will remember this against him."
"But I shall know!" she said proudly.
"And that will be enough—you will ask no more than that, Elizabeth?"
"If my faith in him has never been shaken, could I ask more?"
He looked at her wistfully. Her courage he comprehended. It was fine and true, like her sweet unspoiled youth; in its presence he felt a sudden sense of age and loneliness. He asked himself, had he lived beyond his own period of generous enthusiasm?
"It would be a poor kind of friendship, a poorer kind of love, if we did not let him know at once that this has not changed our—our, regard for him!" she said softly.
"It is not your ready sympathy; you are quite certain it is not that, Elizabeth?"
"I am sure, father—sure of myself as I am of him! You say he has been arrested, does that mean—" and she hesitated.
"It means, my dear, that he is in jail," answered the general as he came slowly to his feet.