he tale of Zora to Mrs. Grey's private ear later.

"Fortunately," said Mr. Vanderpool, "Northerners and Southerners are
arriving at a better mutual understanding on most of these matters."

"Yes, indeed," Cresswell agreed. "After all, they never were far apart,
even in slavery days; both sides were honest and sincere."

All through the dinner Mr. Smith had been preoccupied and taciturn. Now
he abruptly shot a glance at Cresswell.

"I suppose that one was right and one was wrong."

"No," said Cresswell, "both were right."

"I thought the only excuse for fighting was a great Right; if Right is
on neither side or simultaneously on both, then War is not only Hell but
Damnation."

Mrs. Grey looked shocked and Mrs. Vanderpool smiled.

"How about fighting for exercise?" she suggested.

"At any rate," said Cresswell, "we can all agree on helping these poor
victims of our quarrel as far as their limited capacity will allow--and
no farther, for that is impossible."

Very soon after dinner Charles Smith excused himself. He was not yet
inured to the ways of high finance, and the programme of the cotton
barons, as unfolded that day, lay heavy on his mind, despite all his
philosophy.

"I have had a--full day," he explained to Mrs. Grey.

_Fourteen_

LOVE

The rain was sweeping down in great thick winding sheets. The wind
screamed in the ancient Cresswell oaks and swirled across the swamp in
loud, wild gusts. The waters roared and gurgled in the streams, and
along the roadside. Then, when the wind fell murmuring away, the clouds
grew blacker and blacker and rain in long slim columns fell straight
from Heaven to earth digging itself into the land and throwing back the
red mud in angry flashes.

So it rained for one long week, and so for seven endless days Bles
watched it with leaden heart. He knew the Silver Fleece--his and
Zora's--must be ruined. It was the first great sorrow of his life; it
was not so much the loss of the cotton itself--but the fantasy, the
hopes, the dreams built around it. If it failed, would not they fail?
Was not this angry beating rain, this dull spiritless drizzle, this wild
war of air and earth, but foretaste and prophecy of ruin and
discouragement, of the utter futility of striving? But if his own
despair was great his pain at the plight of Zora made it almost
unbearable. He did not see her in these seven days. He pictured her
huddled there in the swamp in the cheerless leaky cabin