eks. She
walked the floor in rage and dropped at last exhausted:

"I could kill him!"

The memory which stung deepest was the terror she had felt in his
arms--the sudden fear of the brute quivering in tense muscles and
throbbing in passionate kisses. She had thought this man a gentleman. In
that flash of self-revealing he was simply a beast. It had unsettled her
whole attitude toward life. For the first time she began to suspect the
darker side of passion. If this were love, she would have none of it.

Again she resolved for the hundredth time, to banish the last thought of
him. If there were no cleaner, more chivalrous men in the world she
could live without them. But there were men with holier ideals. Ned
Vaughan was one. She drew from the drawer the only letter she had
received from him and the last she would probably get in many a day, as
he had crossed the dead line of war and was now somewhere in the great
silent South. She read it over and over with tender smiles:

"DEAR MISS BETTY;

"I can't disappear behind the battle lines without a last word to
you. I just want to tell you that every hour, waking or dreaming,
the memory of you is my inspiration. The hardest task is easy
because my heart is beating with your name with every stroke. For
me the drums throb it, the bugle calls it. I hear it in the tramp
of soldiers, the rumble of gun, the beat of horses' hoofs and the
rattle of sabre,--for I am fighting my way back, inch by inch, hour
by hour, to you, my love!

"You cannot answer this. There will be no more mails from the
South--no more mails from the North until I see you again on the
Capitol Hill in Washington. There has never been a doubt in my
heart that the South shall win--that I shall win. And when I stand
before you then it will not be as conqueror, though victorious. I
shall bow at your feet your willing slave. And I shall kiss my
chains because your dear hands made them. I can expect no answer to
this. I ask none. I need none. My love is enough. It's so big and
wonderful it makes the world glorious.

"NED."

How sharp and bitter the contrast between the soul of this chivalrous
boy and his vain conceited brother! She loathed herself for her blind
stupidity. Why had she preferred him? Why--why--why! The very question
cut her. It was not because John Vaughan had chosen to cast his lot