swered quietly, "but have you just found
it out?"

"I haven't found it out yet. What is it? What is the matter?"

At the question his calmness deserted him and the dark flush of anger
broke suddenly in his face.

"The matter is, Ben," he replied, holding himself in with an effort,
"that you've missed being a fool only by being a genius instead."

Then turning away, as if his temper had got the better of him, he strode
back through a clump of trees on the lawn, while I went up the steps
again, and crossing the cold hall, entered the dismantled drawing-room,
where a bright log fire was burning.

Sally was sitting on the hearth, half hidden by the high arms of the
chair, and as I closed the door behind me, she rose and stood looking at
me with an expression of surprise. So had Miss Mitty and Miss Matoaca
looked in the firelight on that November afternoon when Sally and I had
gone in together.

"Why, Ben!" she said quietly, "I thought you were in Washington!"

"I got home this morning and found your note. Sally, what is the
trouble?"

"You came after me?"

"I came after you. The General went wild and imagined that there had
been an accident, or George had run off with you."

"Then the General sent you?"

"Nobody sent me. I was leaving the house when he found me."

She had not moved toward me, and for some reason, I still stood where I
had stopped short in the centre of the room, kept back by the reserve,
the detachment in her expression.

"You came believing that George and I had gone off together?" she asked,
and there was a faint hostility in her voice.

"Of course I didn't believe it. I'm not a fool if I am an ass. But if I
had believed it," I added passionately, "it would have made no
difference. I'd have come after you if you'd gone off with twenty
Georges."

"Well, there's only one," she said, "and I did go off with him."

"It makes no difference."

"We left Richmond at ten o'clock yesterday, and we've been here ever
since."

"What does that matter?"

"You mean it doesn't matter that I came away with George and spent
twenty-four hours?"

"I mean that nothing matters--not if you'd spent twenty-four years."

"I suppose it doesn't," she responded quietly, and there was a curious
remoteness, a hollowness in the sound of the words. "When one comes to
see things as they are, nothing really matters. It is all just the
same."

Her face looked unsubstantial and wan in the firelight, and so etherea