The calm of his face, that lofty serenity which had been impressed upon it, was suddenly all broken up.

“Sara!” he repeated, a ring of incredulity in his tones.

“Yes,” she said flatly.  “I’ve come back.”

She moved towards him, trying to control the trembling that had seized her limbs.

“I—­I’ve just come back from France,” she added, making a lame attempt to speak conventionally.

It was an effort to hold out her hand, and, when his closed around it, she felt her whole body thrill at his touch, just as it had been wont to thrill in those few, short, golden days when their mutual happiness had been undarkened by any shadow from the past.  Swiftly, as though all at once afraid, she snatched her hand from his clasp.

“What have you been doing in France?” he asked.

“Nursing,” she answered briefly.  “Did you think I could stay here and do—­nothing, at such a time as this?”

There was accusation in her tone, but if he felt that her speech reflected in any way upon himself, he showed no sign of it.  His eyes were roving over her, marking the changes wrought in the year that had passed since they had met—­the sharpened contour of her face, the too slender body, the white fragility of the bare hand which grasped the handle of the basket she was carrying.

“You are looking very ill,” he said, at last, abruptly.

“I’m not ill,” she replied indifferently.  “Only a bit over-tired.  As soon as I have had a thorough rest I am going back to France.”

“You won’t go back there again?” he exclaimed sharply.  “You’re not fit for such work!”

“Certainly I shall go back—­as soon as ever Dr. Selwyn will let me.  It’s little enough to do for the men who are giving—­everything!” Suddenly, the pent-up indignation within her broke bounds.  “Garth, how can you stay here when men are fighting, dying—­out there?” Her voice vibrated with the sense of personal shame which his apathy inspired in her.  “Oh!”—­as though she feared he might wound her yet further by advancing the obvious excuse—­“I know you’re past military age.  But other men—­older men than you—­have gone.  I know a man of fifty who bluffed and got in!  There are heaps of back doors into the Army these days.”

“And there’s a back door out of it—­the one through which I was kicked out!” he retorted, his mouth setting itself in the familiar bitter lines.

The scoffing defiance of his attitude baffled her.

“Don’t you want to help your country?” she pleaded.  It was horrible to her that he should stand aside—­inexplicable except in terms of that wretched business on the Indian Frontier, in the hideous truth of which only his own acknowledgment had compelled her to believe.

He looked at her with hard, indifferent eyes.

“My country made me an outcast,” he replied.  “I’ll remain such.”

Somehow, even in her shamed bewilderment and anger, she sensed the hurt that lay behind the curt speech.