hills of Spain.

"Love that can flow ..." murmured Knightley, and of a sudden he flung
back into the room. "Let me have the truth of it," he burst out,
confronting his brother-officers gathered about the table--"the truth,
though it knell out my damnation. If you only knew how up there, at
Fez, at Mequinez, I have pictured your welcome when I should get back!
I made of my anticipation a very anodyne. The cudgelling, the chains,
the hunger, the sun, hot as though a burning glass was held above my
head--it would all make a good story for the guard-room when I got
back--when I got back. And yet I do get back, and one and all of you
draw away from me as though I were one of the Tangier lepers we
jostle in the streets. 'Love that can flow ...'" he broke off. "I ask
myself"--he hesitated, and with a great cry, "I ask you, did I play
the coward on that night I was captured two years ago?"

"The coward?" exclaimed Shackleton in bewilderment.

Wyley, for all his sympathy, could not refrain from a triumphant
glance at Scrope. "Here is the instance you needed," he said.

"Yes, did I play the coward?" Knightley seated himself sideways on the
edge of the table, and clasping his hands between his knees, went on
in a quick, lowered voice. "'Love that can flow'--those are the last
words I remember. You sent me, Major, to the Governor with a message.
I delivered it; I started back. On my way back I passed my house. I
went in. I stood in the _patio_. My wife was singing that song. The
window of the room in which she sang opened on to the _patio_. I stood
there listening for a second. Then I went upstairs. I turned the
handle of the door. I remember quite clearly the light upon the room