was in a flippant vein that drove him wild with baffled hope. The day
before he was to bid the kind house adieu he had his wish. She was
riding with him over the shaded roadway that curves in bewildering
beauty toward the lake. She seemed in a gentler mood than he had lately
seen her. They rode slowly side by side, but Vincent had a dismal
awkwardness of speech in whimsical contrast to his habitual fluency.

"There's only one thing hateful to me in this war," he said, caressing
the arching neck of his horse, "and that is, the better we do our duty
as soldiers the more sorrow we must bring upon our own friends."

"That's a rather solemn view to take of what Jack regards as the path of
glory."

"Oh, you know what I mean: under the flag there can or ought to be no
friendships--the bullet sent from the musket, the sword drawn in light,
must be aimed blindly. It might be my fate, for example, to meet
Jack, to--to--"

"Yes," Olympia laughed demurely, ignoring the sentimental aspect of
Vincent's remark. "Yes, that might paralyze the arm of valor; but, then,
you and Jack have met before, when duty demanded one thing and affection
another: I don't see that the dilemma softened the blows, or that either
of you are any the worse for them."

Vincent was the real Southerner of his epoch--impulsive, sentimental,
ardent in all that he espoused, without the slightest notion of humor,
though imaginative as a dreamer; love, war, and his State, Virginia,
were passions that he thought it a duty to uphold at any and all times.
He colored under the girl's satiric sally. If she had been a man he