She crouched close to the sleeping face of the young American. It was a piteously thin face she thought, and the lips were twisted. The man was suffering whether he knew it or not. Watching him, she wondered if the stories they heard sometimes of the sufferings of prisoners were true. They came like flickers of rumour, told by word of mouth and always contradicted. Which word in the above extract is the synonym of ‘confute’?
