all thank God for it."

Virginia had risen now. She crossed the room, her head lifted, her heart
lifted, to where this man of sorrows stood smiling down at her.

"Mr. Lincoln," she faltered, "I did not know you when I came here. I
should have known you, for I had heard him--I had heard Major Brice
praise you. Oh," she cried, "how I wish that every man and woman and
child in the South might come here and see you as I have seen you to-day.
I think--I think that some of their bitterness might be taken away."

Abraham Lincoln laid his hands upon the girl. And Stephen, watching, knew
that he was looking upon a benediction.

"Virginia," said Mr. Lincoln, "I have not suffered by the South, I have
suffered with the South Your sorrow has been my sorrow, and your pain has
been my pain. What you have lost, I have lost. And what you have gained,"
he added sublimely, "I have gained."

He led her gently to the window. The clouds were flying before the wind,
and a patch of blue sky shone above the Potomac. With his long arm he
pointed across the river to the southeast, and as if by a miracle a shaft
of sunlight fell on the white houses of Alexandria.

"In the first days of the war," he said, "a flag flew there in sight of
the place where George Washington lived and died. I used to watch that
flag, and thank God that Washington had not lived to see it. And
sometimes, sometimes I wondered if God had allowed it to be put in irony
just there." His voice seemed to catch. "That was wrong," he continued.
"I should have known that this was our punishment--that the sight of it