Sara could guess well the frayed nerves, the low vitality of men who were short of food, short of sleep, and worn with incessant watching night and day.  But—­Could it be possible that Englishmen had flinched at the crucial moment—­lost their nerve and fled in wild disorder?  Englishmen—­who held the sacred trust of empire in their hands—­to show the white feather to a horde of rebel natives!  It was inconceivable!  Sara, reared in the great tradition by that gallant gentleman, Patrick Lovell, refused to credit it.

She drew a long, shuddering breath.

“I don’t believe it,” she said.

Elisabeth looked at her with a pitying comprehension of the blow she had just dealt her.

“I’m afraid,” she said gently, almost deprecatingly, “that there is no questioning the finding of the court-martial.  Garth must have lost his head at the unexpectedness of the attack.  And panic is a curious, unaccountable kind of thing, you know.”

“I don’t believe it,” reiterated Sara stubbornly.

Elisabeth bent forward.

“My dear,” she said, “there is no possibility of doubt.  Garth was wounded; they brought him in afterwards—­shot in the back! . . .  Oh!  It was all a horrible business!  And the most wretched part of it all was that in reality they were only a few stray tribesmen whom our men had encountered.  Perhaps Garth thought they were outnumbered—­I don’t know.  But anyway, coming on the top of all that had gone before, the surprise attack in the darkness broke his nerve completely.  He didn’t even attempt to make a stand.  He simply gave way.  What followed was just a headlong scramble as to who could save his skin first!  I shall never forget Garth’s return after—­after the court-martial.”  She shuddered a little at the memory.  “I—­I was engaged to him at the time, Sara, and I had no choice but to break it off.  Garth was cashiered—­disgraced—­done for.”

Sara’s drooping figure suddenly straightened.

“You—­you—­were engaged to Garth?” she said in a queer, high voice.

“Yes”—­simply.  “I had promised to marry him.”

Sara was silent for a long moment.  Then—­

“He never told me,” she muttered.  “He never told me.”

“No?  It was hardly likely he would, was it?  He couldn’t tell you that without telling you—­the rest.”

Sara made no answer.  She felt stunned—­beaten into helpless silence by the quiet, inexorable voice that, bit by bit, minute by minute, had drawn aside the veil of ignorance and revealed the dry bones and rottenness that lay hidden behind it.

“I don’t believe it!” she had cried in a futile effort to convince herself by the sheer reiteration of denial.  But she did believe it, nevertheless.  The whole miserable story tallied too accurately with the bitterly significant remarks that Garth himself had let fall from time to time.

That day of the dog-fight, for instance.  What was it he had said? “A certain amount of allowance must be made for nerves.”