“No.  Had my father been cashiered—­for cowardice”—­he stumbled a little over the words—­“the knowledge of it would have knocked all the initiative out of me.  I should have been afraid of showing the white feather. . . .  The fear of being afraid would have been always at the back of me.”  He paused, then went on quickly:  “And I think it would have been the same with Dad.  It—­it would have broken him.  He could never have fought as he did with that behind him.  You’ve . . . you’ve given two men to the country. . . .”

He broke off, boyishly embarrassed, a little overwhelmed by his own big thoughts.

And suddenly to Maurice, all that had been dark and obscure grew clear in the white shining of the light that gleamed down the track of those lost years.

A beautiful and ordered issue was revealed.  Out of the ruin and bleak suffering of the past had sprung the flaming splendour of heroic life and death—­a glory of achievement that, but for those arid years of silence, had been thwarted and frustrated by the deadening knowledge of the truth.

Kindling to the recognition of new and wonderful significances, his eyes sought those of the woman who loved him, and in their quiet radiance he read that she, too, had understood.

For her, as for him, the dark places had been made light, and with quickened vision she perceived, in all that had befallen, the fulfilling of the Divine law.

“Sara——­”

Her hands went out to him, and the grave happiness deepened in her eyes.

“Oh, my dear, no love—­no sacrifice is ever wasted!”

She spoke very simply, very confidently.