home-going remained, and the culmination, a dinner at
Moreau's, Victor's, or Miguel's, the natural epilogue to the day's
pastime, the tag to the comedy! In the returning throng were creoles
with sky-blue costumes and palmetto hats; the Lafourche or Attakapas
planter; representatives of the older regime and the varied newer
populace. Superb equipages mingled in democratic confusion with carts
and wagons; the broken-winded nag and spavined crowbait--veterans at
the bugle call!--pricked up their ears and kicked up their heels like
colts in pasture, while the delighted darkies thumped their bony
shanks to encourage this brief rejuvenescence.

Those who had lost felt the money well spent; those who had won would
be the more lavish in the spending. They had simply won a few more
pleasures. "Quick come; quick go!" sang the whirling wheels. "The
niggard in pound and pence is a usurer in happiness; a miser driving a
hard bargain with pleasure. Better burn the candle at both ends than
not burn it at all! In one case, you get light; in the other nothing
but darkness. Laughter is cheap at any price. A castle in the air is
almost as durable as Solomon's temple. How soon--how soon both fade
away!"

Thus ran the song of the wheels before them and behind them, as the
soldier and Constance joined the desultory fag-end of the procession.
On either side of the road waved the mournful cypress, draped by the
hoary tillandsia, and from the somber depths of foliage came the chirp
of the tree-crickets and the note of the swamp owl. Faint music, in
measured rhythm, a foil to disconnected wood-sound, was wafted from a
distant plantation.

"Wait!" said Constance.

He drew in the horses and silently they listened. Or, was he
listening? His glance seemed bent so moodily--almost!--on space she
concluded he was not. She stole a sidelong look at him.

"A penny for your thoughts!" she said gaily.

He started. "I was thinking how soon I might leave New Orleans."

"Leave New Orleans!" she repeated in surprise. "But I thought you
intended staying here. Why have you changed your mind?"

Did he detect a subtle accent of regret in her voice? A deep flush
mounted to his brow. He bent over her suddenly, eagerly.

"Would it matter--if I went?"

She drew back at the abruptness of his words.

"How unfair to answer one question with another!" she said lightly.

A pause fell between them. Perhaps she, too, felt the sudden repulse
of her own answer a