“But would it be too late?” and she rested a shaking hand on his arm.

“You must not ask me that—­I don’t know.”

He tried to meet her glance, which seemed to read his very soul, then her hand dropped at her side and she took a step forward, her head bowed and her face averted.

Again came the thought of North’s awful isolation; the thought of that lonely death where love and tenderness had no place; all the ghastly terror of that last moment when he was hurried from this living breathing world!  It was a monstrous thing!  A thing beyond belief—­incredible, unspeakable!

“We can believe in his courage,” said her father, “as certainly as we can believe in his innocence.”

“Yes—­” she gasped.

“That is something.  And the day will surely come when the world will think as we think.  The truth seems lost now, but not for always!”

“But when he is gone—­when he is no longer here—­”

The general was silent.  North had compelled his respect and faith; for after all, no guilty man could have faced death with so fine a courage.  There was more to him than he had ever been willing to admit in his judgment of the man.  Whatever his faults, they had been the faults of youth; had the opportunity been given him he would have redeemed himself, would have purged himself of folly.  “Some day,” the general was thinking, “I will tell her just what my feelings for North have been, how out of disapproval and doubt has come a deep and sincere regard.”

The sun swept higher in the heavens, and the gray old man with the strong haggard face, and the girl in whom the girl had died and the woman had been born, walked on; now with dragging steps, when the stupor of despair seized her, now swiftly as her thoughts rushed from horror to horror.

The world, basking in the warmth of that June sun, seemed very peaceful as they looked out across the long reaches of the flat valley, and on to the distant town, with the lazy smoke of its factory chimneys floated above the spires and housetops.  But the peace that was breathed out of the great calm heart of nature was not for these two!  The girl’s sense was only one of fierce rebellion at the injustice which was taking—­had taken, perhaps, the life of the man she loved; an injustice that could never make amends—­so implacable in its exactions, so impotent in its atonements!

They were nearing the limits of the grounds; back of them, among its trees, loomed the gray stone front of Idle Hour.  Her father rested a hand upon Elizabeth’s shoulder.

“I will try to be brave, too—­as he was always—­” she said pausing.

She stood there, a tragic figure, and then turned to her father with pathetic courage.  She would take up what was left for her.  She had her memories.  They were of happiness no less than sorrow, for she had loved much and suffered much.

With a final lingering glance townward, she turned away.  Then a startled cry escaped her, and her father looked up.