They could not be explained away; he wore "coward" like
a blind man's label; besides, he could never make her understand.
However, she wished for the explanation and had a right to it; she had
been generous in asking for it, with a generosity not very common
amongst women. So Feversham gathered his wits and explained:--
"All my life I have been afraid that some day I should play the coward,
and from the very first I knew that I was destined for the army. I kept
my fear to myself. There was no one to whom I could tell it. My mother
was dead, and my father--" he stopped for a moment, with a deep intake
of the breath. He could see his father, that lonely iron man, sitting at
this very moment in his mother's favourite seat upon the terrace, and
looking over the moonlit fields toward the Sussex Downs; he could
imagine him dreaming of honours and distinctions worthy of the
Fevershams to be gained immediately by his son in the Egyptian campaign.
Surely that old man's stern heart would break beneath this blow. The
magnitude of the bad thing which he had done, the misery which it would
spread, were becoming very clear to Harry Feversham. He dropped his head
between his hands and groaned aloud.
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