e wind will bring back my colour. If I lie there and think all day, I
shall go out of my mind." Her lips trembled and a quiver passed through
her face, but when I made a step toward her, she repulsed me with a
gesture which, gentle as it was, appeared to place me at a measured
distance. "I wish--oh, I wish Aunt Euphronasia wasn't dead," she said in
a whisper.

"If you go, may I go with you?" I asked.

For a minute she hesitated, then meeting my eyes with a glance in which
I read for the first time since I had known her, a gentle aversion, a
faint hostility, she answered quietly:--

"I am sorry, but I've just telephoned Bonny that I'd call for her."

The old bruise in my heart throbbed while I turned away; but the pain
instead of melting my pride, only increased the terrible reticence which
I wore now as an armour. Her face, above the heavy furs that seemed
dragging her down, had in it something of the soft, uncompromising
obstinacy of Miss Matoaca. So delicate she appeared that I could almost
have broken her body in my grasp; yet I knew that she would not yield
though I brought the full strength of my will to bear in the struggle.
In the old days, doubtless, Matoaca Bland, then in her pride and beauty,
had faced the General with this same firmness which was as soft as
velvet yet as inflexible as steel.

A few days after this, the great man, who had grown at last too feeble
for an active part in "affairs," resigned the presidency of the South
Midland, and retired, as he said, "to enjoy his second childhood."

"It's about time for Theophilus to bring around his box of ants, I
reckon," he observed, and added seriously after a moment, "Yes, there's
no use trying to prop up a fallen tree, Ben. I've had a long life and a
good life, and I am willing to draw out. It's a losing game any way you
play it, when it comes to that. I've thought a lot about it, my boy,
these last weeks, and I tell you the only thing that sticks by you to
the last is the love of a woman. If you need a woman when you are young,
you need her ten thousand times more when you're old. If Miss Matoaca
had married me, we'd both of us have been a long ways better off."

That night I told Sally of the resignation, and repeated to her a part
of the conversation. The sentimental allusion to Miss Matoaca she
treated with scorn, but after a few thoughtful moments she said:--

"You've always wanted to be president of the South Midland more than
anything in th