The old lust of power, the
passion for supremacy, still haunted my dreams, or came back to me at
moments like this, when I drove with Sally through the restless pines,
and smelt those vague, sweet scents of the spring, which stirred
something primitive and male in my heart. The fighter and the dreamer,
having fought out their racial battle to a finish, were now merged into
one.

We drove home slowly, the lights of the little Southern village shining
brightly through a cloudless atmosphere ahead--and the lights, like the
spring scents and the restless soughing of the pines, deepened the sense
of failure, of incompleteness, from which I suffered. My career showed
to me as suddenly cut off and broken, like a road the making of which
has stopped short halfway up a hill. Did she discern this restlessness
in me, I wondered, this ceaseless ache which resembled the ache of
muscles that have been long unused?

After this the months slipped quietly by, one placid week succeeding
another in a serene and cloudless monotony. Sally had few friends, there
were no women of her own social position in the place; yet she was never
lonely, never bored, never in search of distraction.

"I love it here, Ben," she said once, "it is so peaceful, just you and
I."

"You'd tire of it before long, and you'll be glad enough to go back to
Richmond when next spring comes."

At the time she did not protest, but when the following spring began to
unfold, and we prepared to return to Virginia in May, there was
something pensive and wistful in her parting from the little village and
from the people who had been kind to her in the year she had spent
there. We had taken several rooms in the house of Dr. Theophilus, who
was supported in his prodigality in roses only by the strenuous pickling
and preserving of Mrs. Clay; and as we drove, on a warm May afternoon,
up the familiar street from the station, I tried in vain to arouse in
her some of the interest, the animation, that she had lost.

"You'll be glad to see the doctor and Bonny and George," I said.

"Yes, I'll be glad to see the doctor and Bonny and George. There is the
house now, and look, the doctor is in his garden."

He had seen us before she spoke, for glancing up meditatively from
working a bed of bleeding hearts near the gate, his dim old eyes, over
their lowered spectacles, had been attracted to the approaching
carriage. Rising to his feet, he came rapidly to the pavement, his
trowel