“Men who have been cashiered, men who are too old—­they’re all going back,” she urged tremulously, snatching at any weapon that suggested itself.

He shrugged his shoulders.

“Let them!”

She stared at him in silence.  She felt exactly as though she had been beating against a closed door.  With a gesture of hopelessness she turned away, recognizing the futility of pleading with him further.

“One moment”—­he stepped in front of her, barring her path.  “I want an answer to a question before you go.”

There was something of his old arrogance in the demand—­the familiar, dominating quality which had always swayed her.  Despite herself, she yielded to it now.

“Well?” she said unwillingly.  “What is it you wish to know?”

“I want to know if you are engaged to Tim Durward.”

For an instant the colour rushed into Sara’s white face; then it ebbed away, leaving it paler than before.

“No,” she said quietly.  “I am not.”  She lifted her eyes, accusing, passionately reproachful, to his.  “How could you—­even ask me that?  Did you ever believe I loved you?” she went on fiercely.  “And if I did—­could I care for any one else?”

A look of triumph leapt into his eyes.

“You care still, then?” he asked, and in his voice was blent all the exultation, and the wonder, and the piercing torment of love itself.

Sara felt herself slipping, knew that she was losing her hold of herself.  Soon she would be a-wash in a sea of love, helpless to resist as a bit of driftwood, and then the waters would close over her head and she would be drawn down into the depths of shame which yielding to her love for Garth involved.

She must go—­leave him while she had the power.  Summoning up her strength, she faced him.

“I do,” she answered steadily.  “But I pray God every night of my life that I may soon cease to care.”

And with those few words, limitless in their scorn—­for him, and for herself because she still loved him—­she turned to go.

But their contempt seemed to pass him by.  His eyes burned.

“So Elisabeth has played her stake—­and lost!” he muttered to himself.  “Ah!  Pardon!” he drew aside as she almost brushed past him in her sudden haste to escape—­to get away—­and stood, with bared head, his eyes fixed on her receding figure.

Soon a bend in the path through the fields hid her from his sight.  But, long after she had disappeared, he remained leaning, motionless, against the gateway through which she had passed, his face immobile, twisted and drawn so that it resembled some sculptured mask of Pain, his eyes staring straight in front of him, blank and unseeing.

“Hullo, Trent!”

Miles Herrick, returning from the town to the hospital and taking, like every one else, the short cut across the fields, waved a friendly arm as he caught sight of Garth’s figure silhouetted against the sky-line.