Such was the tale Elisabeth unfolded, and the hushed listeners, keyed up by its tragic drama, could visualize for themselves the scene of that last piteous interview between Elisabeth and the man who had loved her to his own utter undoing.

She was still a very lovely woman, and it was easy to realize how well-nigh bewilderingly beautiful she must have been in her youth, easy to imagine how Garth—­or Maurice Kennedy, as he must henceforth be recognized—­worshipping her with a boy’s headlong passion, had agreed to let the judgment of the Court remain unchallenged and to shoulder the burden of another man’s sin.

Probably he felt that, since he had lost her, nothing else mattered, and, with the reckless chivalry of youth, he never stopped to count the cost.  He only knew that the woman he loved, whose beauty pierced him to the very soul, so that his vision was blurred by the sheer loveliness of her, demanded her happiness at his hands and that he must give it to her.

“I suppose you think there was no excuse for what I did,” Elisabeth concluded, with something of appeal in her voice.  “But I did not realize, then, quite all that I was taking from Maurice.  I think that much must be granted me. . . .  But I make no excuse for what I did afterwards.  There is none.  I did it deliberately.  Maurice had won the woman Tim wanted, and I hoped that if he were utterly discredited, Sara would refuse to marry him, and thus the way would be open to Tim.  So I made public the story of the court-martial which had sentenced Maurice.  Had it not been for that, I should have held my peace for ever about his having been cashiered.  I—­I owed him that much.”  She was silent a moment.  Presently she raised her head and spoke in harsh, wrung accents.  “But I’ve been punished!  God saw to that.  What do you think it has meant to me to know that my husband—­the man I worshipped—­had been once a coward?  It’s true the world never knew it . . . but I knew it.”

The agony of pride wounded in its most sacred place, the suffering of love that despises what it loves, yet cannot cease from loving, rang in her voice, and her haunted eyes—­the eyes which had guarded their secret so invincibly—­seemed to plead for comfort, for understanding.

It was Miles who answered that unspoken supplication.

“I think you need never feel shame again,” he said very gently.  “Major Durward’s splendid death has more than wiped out that one mistake of his youth.  Thank God he never knew it needed wiping out.”

A momentary tranquility came into Elisabeth’s face.

“No,” she answered simply.  “No, he never knew.”  Then the tide of bitter recollection surged over her once more, and she continued passionately:  “Oh yes, I’ve been punished!  Day and night, day and night since the war began, I’ve lived in terror that the fear—­his father’s fear—­might suddenly grip Tim out there in Flanders.  I kept him out of the