myself. It's
perverse because, although you are a little curious, you have no real
interest in what I might say. There is something about you like--yes,
like the cast-iron dog that used to stand in our lawn. It rusted away,
cold to the last and indifferent, although I talked to it by the hour.
But I did get a little comfort from its stolid painted eye. Perhaps
you'd act in the same way.

"And then," she went on when Woolfolk had somberly failed to comment,
"you are going away, you will forget, it can't possibly matter. I must
talk, now that I have urged myself this far. After all, you needn't
have come back. But where shall I begin? You should know something of
the very first. That happened in Virginia.... My father didn't go to
war," she said, sudden and clear. She turned her face toward him, and
he saw that it had lost its flower-like quality; it looked as if it
had been carved in stone.

"He lived in a small, intensely loyal town," she continued; "and when
Virginia seceded it burned with a single high flame of sacrifice. My
father had been always a diffident man; he collected mezzotints and
avoided people. So, when the enlistment began, he shrank away from the
crowds and hot speeches, and the men went off without him. He lived in
complete retirement then, with his prints, in a town of women. It
wasn't impossible at first; he discussed the situation with the few
old tradesmen that remained, and exchanged bows with the wives and
daughters of his friends. But when the dead commenced to be brought in
from the front it got worse. Belle Semple--he had always thought her
unusually nice and pretty--mocked at him on the street. Then one
morning he found an apron tied to the knob of the front door.

"After that he went out only at night. His servants had deserted him,
and he lived by himself in a biggish, solemn house. Sometimes the news
of losses and deaths would be shouted through his windows; once stones
were thrown in, but mostly he was let alone. It must have been
frightful in his empty rooms when the South went from bad to worse."
She paused, and John Woolfolk could see, even in the obscurity, the
slow shudder that passed over her.

"When the war was over and what men were left returned--one with hands
gone at the wrists, another without legs in a shabby wheelchair--the
life of the town started once more, but my father was for ever outside
of it. Little subscriptions for burials were made up, small schemes
for gett