“Garth!  Garth!” The name by which she had always known him sprang spontaneously from Sara’s lips.  Her voice was shaking, but her eyes, likes Herrick’s, held a glory of quiet shining.  “How could you, dear?  What madness!  What idiotic, glorious madness!”

“I don’t see how I could have done anything else,” said Maurice simply.  “Elisabeth’s whole scheme of existence was fashioned on her trust in my promise.  I couldn’t—­afterwards, after her marriage and Tim’s birth—­suddenly pull away the very foundation on which she had built up her life.”

Impulsively Sara slipped her hand into his.

“I’m glad—­glad you couldn’t, dear,” she whispered.  “It would not have been my Garth if you could have done.”

He pressed her hand in silence.  A curious lassitude was stealing over him.  He had borne the heat and burden of the day, and now that the work was done and there was nothing further to fight for, nothing left to struggle and contend against, he was conscious of a strange feeling of frustration.

It seemed almost as though the long agony of those years of self-immolation had been in vain—­a useless sacrifice, made meaningless and of no account by the destined march of events.

He felt vaguely baulked and disillusioned—­bewildered that a man’s aim and purpose, which in its accomplishing had cost so immeasurable a price—­crushing the whole beauty and savour out of life—­should suddenly be destroyed and nullified.  In the light of the present, the past seemed futile—­years that the locust had eaten.

It was a relief when presently some one broke in upon the confused turmoil of his thoughts with a message from Tim.  He was asking to see both Sara and Maurice—­would they go to him?

Together they went up to his room—­Maurice still with that look of grave perplexity upon his face which his somewhat bitter reflections had engendered.

The eager, boyish face on the pillow flushed a little as they entered.

“Mother has told me everything,” he said simply, going straight to the point.  “It’s—­it’s been rather a facer.”

Maurice pointed to the narrow ribbon—­the white, purple, white of the Military Cross—­upon the breast of the khaki tunic flung across a chair-back—­a rather disheveled tunic, rescued with other odds and ends from the wreckage of Tim’s room at Sunnyside.

“It needn’t be, Tim,” he said, “with that to your credit.”

Tim’s eyes glowed.

“That’s just it—­that’s what I wanted to see you for,” he said.  “I hope you won’t think it cheek,” he went on rather shyly, “but I wanted you to know that—­that what you did for my mother—­assuming the disgrace, I mean, that wasn’t yours—­hasn’t been all wasted.  What little I’ve done—­well, it would never have been done had I known what I know now.”

“I think it would,” Maurice dissented quietly.

Tim shook his head.