ooked at her, at the cockade
with its fluttering red-white-and-blue ribbons on her breast, at
the clear, fearless eyes now brilliant with excitement and
indignation.

"Have you thought of enlisting?" she asked abruptly, without
glancing at him.

"Yes," he said, "I've ventured that far. It's perfectly safe to
think about it. You have no idea, Mrs. Paige, what warlike
sentiments I cautiously entertain in my office chair."

She turned nervously, with a sunny glint of gold hair and
fluttering ribbons:

"Are you _never_ perfectly serious, Mr. Berkley? Even at such a
moment as this?"

"Always," he insisted. "I was only philosophising upon these
scenes of inexpensive patriotism which fill even the most urbane
and peaceful among us full of truculence. . . . I recently saw my
tailor wearing a sword, attired in the made-to-measure panoply of
battle."

"Did that strike you as humorous?"

"No, indeed; it fitted; I am only afraid he may find a soldier's
grave before I can settle our sartorial accounts."

There was a levity to his pleasantries which sounded discordant to
her amid the solemnly thrilling circumstances impending. For the
flower of the city's soldiery was going forth to battle--a thousand
gay, thoughtless young fellows summoned from ledger, office, and
counting-house; and all about her a million of their neighbours had
gathered to see them go.

"Applause makes patriots. Why should I enlist when merely by
cheering others I can stand here and create heroes in battalions?"

"I think," she said, "that there was once another scoffer who
remained to pray."

As he did not answer, she sent a swift side glance at him, found
him tranquilly surveying the crowd below where, at the corner of
Canal and Broadway, half a dozen Zouaves, clothed in their
characteristic and brilliant uniforms and wearing hairy knapsacks
trussed up behind, were being vociferously acclaimed by the people
as they passed, bayonets fixed.

"More heroes," he observed, "made immortal while you wait."

And now Ailsa became aware of a steady, sustained sound audible
above the tumult around them; a sound like surf washing on a
distant reef.

"Do you hear that? It's like the roar of the sea," she said. "I
believe they're coming; I think I caught a strain of military music
a moment ago!"

They rose on tiptoe, straining their ears; even the skylarking
gamins who had occupied the stage top behind them, and the driver,
who had reappeared,