ld with it!"

"Why, Elsin!" I laughed, "this is a new note in your voice."

"Is it? Perhaps it is. I told you, Carus, that there is no happiness in
love. And, just now, I love you. It is strange, is it not?--when aught
threatens you, straightway I begin to sadden and presently fall in love
with you; but when there's no danger anywhere, and I have nothing to
sadden me, why, I'm not at all sure that I love you enough to pass the
balance of the day in your companionship--only that when you are away I
desire to know where you are and what you do, and with whom you walk
and talk and laugh. Deary me! deary me! I know not what I want, Carus.
Let us go to the Blue Fox and drink a dish of tea."

We walked back to the inn through the sweetest evening air that I had
breathed in many a day, Elsin stopping now and then to add a blossom to
the great armful of wild flowers that she had gathered, I lingering,
happy in my freedom as a lad loosed from school, now pausing to skip
flat stones across the Bronx, now creeping up to the bank to surprise
the trout and see them scatter like winged shadows over the golden
gravel, now whistling to imitate that rosy-throated bird who sits so
high in his black-and-white livery and sings into happiness all who
hear him.

The sun was low over the Jersey highlands; swarms of swallows rose,
soared, darted, and dipped in the evening sky. I heard the far
camp-bugles playing softly, the dulled roll of drums among the eastern
hills; then, as the red sun went out behind the wooded heights, bang!
the evening gun's soft thunder shook the silence. And our day was
ended.

CHAPTER VIII

DESTINY

On Sunday, having risen early--though not so early as the post relief,
whose day begins as soon as a sentry can see clearly for a thousand
yards--I dressed me by the rosy light of the rising sun, and, before I
breakfasted, wrote a long letter to my parents, who, as I have said,
were now residing near Paris, where my great-grandfather's estate lay.

When I had finished my letter, sanded and sealed it, I went out to
leave it with the packages of post matter collected from the French
regiments across the Hudson, and destined for France by an early
packet, which was to sail as soon as the long-expected French fleet
arrived from the West Indies.

I delivered my letter to the staff-officer detailed for that duty, and
then, hearing military music, went back to the Blue Fox in time to see
a funeral of an offic