is ignoble love that had left her so ashamed, so humiliated,
so cruelly crushed for ever. And all night long she dreamed of
Berkley and of his blessed nearness; and the sweetness of her dream
troubled her profoundly. She sat up, still asleep, her straining
throat whispering his name, her arms outstretched, blindly
searching the darkness for him, until suddenly awake, she realised
what she was doing, and dropped back among her pillows.

All that day the city was filled with rumours of a great battle
fought in Virginia. The morning's papers hailed it with triumphant
head-lines and columns of praise and thanksgiving for a great
victory won. But at night the stunned city knew that Bull Run had
been fought and lost, and the Confederacy was at the gates of
Washington.

CHAPTER XI

In a city where thousands and thousands of women were now
organising relief work for the troops already in the field, Ailsa
Paige had been among the earliest to respond to the call for a
meeting at the Church of the Puritans. Here she had left her name
for enrolment with Mrs. Gerard Stuyvesant.

Later, with Mrs. Marquand, Mrs. Aspinwall, Mrs. Astor, and Mrs.
Hamilton Fish, and a hundred others, she had signed the call for
the great mass-meeting; had acted on one of the subcommittees
chosen from among the three thousand ladies gathered at the
Institute; had served with Mrs. Schuyler on the board of the
Central Relief Association; had been present at the inception of
the Sanitary Commission and its adjunct, the Allotment Commission;
had contributed to the Christian Commission, six thousand of whose
delegates were destined to double the efficiency of the armies of
the Union.

Then Sainte Ursula's Sisterhood, organised for field as well as
hospital service, demanded all her energies. It was to be an
emergency corps; she had hesitated to answer the call, hesitated to
enroll for this rougher service, and, troubled, had sought counsel
from Mr. Dodge and Mr. Bronson of the Allotment Commission, and
from Dr. Agnew of the Sanitary Commission.

Dr. Agnew wrote to Dr. Benton:

"Mrs. Paige is a very charming and very sweet little lady,
excellently equipped by experience to take the field with Sainte
Ursula's Sisterhood, but self-distrustful and afraid of her own
behaviour on a battle-field where the emergency corps might be
under fire. In _this_ sort of woman I have every confidence."

The next day Ailsa enrolled; arranged her househ