"I don't care--I don't care--I never did!" she gasped.

But she did, and only now knew it.

"I was right--I'm glad--I'd say it again!"

But she would not, and she knew it. She knew that Barlow could not be
a traitor; she knew it; it was just a battered new love asserting
itself.

And below in the room the two men for a little sat not speaking of the
ghoulish thing. Barlow had drawn the papers from his pocket; he passed
them silently across the table.

Hodson, almost mechanically, had stretched a hand for them, and when
they were opened, and he saw the seal, and realised what they were,
some curious guttural sound issued from his lips as if he had waked in
affright from a nightmare. He pulled a drawer of the desk open, took
out a cheroot--and lighted it. Then he commenced to speak, slowly,
droppingly, as one speaks who has suddenly been detected in a crime.
He put a flat hand on the papers, holding them to the desk. And it was
Elizabeth he spoke of at first, as if the thing under his palm, that
meant danger to an empire, was subservient.

"Barlow, my boy," he said, "I'm old, I'm tired."

The Captain, looking into the drawn face, had a curious feeling that
Hodson was at least a hundred. There was a floaty wonderment in his
mind why the fifty-five-years'-service retirement rule had not been
enforced in the Colonel's case. Then he heard the other's words.