wed
her about.

Her ideals of men were colored by the American prejudice in favor of
those who aim high and venture much. In her childhood she had read Malory
and Froissart with a boy's delight. She possessed, too, that poetic sense
of the charm of "the spirit of place" that is the natural accompaniment
of the imaginative temperament. The cry of bugles sometimes brought tears
to her eyes; her breath came quickly when she sat--as she often did--in
the Fort Myer drill hall at Washington and watched the alert cavalrymen
dashing toward the spectators' gallery in the mimic charge. The work that
brave men do she admired above anything else in the world. As a child in
Washington she had looked wonderingly upon the statues of heroes and the
frequent military pageants of the capital; and she had wept at the solemn
pomp of military funerals. Once on a battleship she had thrilled at the
salutes of a mighty fleet in the Hudson below the tomb of Grant; and soon
thereafter had felt awe possess her as she gazed upon the white marble
effigy of Lee in the chapel at Lexington; for the contemplation of heroes
was dear to her, and she was proud to believe that her father, a veteran
of the Civil War, and her soldier brother were a tie between herself and
the old heroic times.

Armitage was aware that a jeweler's shop was hardly the place for
extended conversation with a young woman whom he scarcely knew, but he
lingered in the joy of hearing this American girl's voice, and what she
said interested him immensely. He had seen her first in Paris a few
months before at an exhibition of battle paintings. He had come upon her
standing quite alone before _High Tide at Gettysburg_, the picture of the
year; and he had noted the quick mounting of color to her cheeks as the
splendid movement of the painting--its ardor and fire--took hold of her.
He saw her again in Florence; and it was from there that he had
deliberately followed the Claibornes.

His own plans were now quite unsettled by his interview with Von
Stroebel. He fully expected Chauvenet in Geneva; the man had apparently
been on cordial terms with the Claibornes; and as he had seemed to be
master of his own time, it was wholly possible that he would appear
before the Claibornes left Geneva. It was now the second day after Von
Stroebel's departure, and Armitage began to feel uneasy.

He stood with Shirley quite near the shop door, watching for Captain
Claiborne to come back with the carri