close above his head. He looked up and smiled at me. Yes, I saw him! I saw
him!"

"It was Dan," said Virginia--not as a question, but in a wondering assent.
"Why, Betty, I thought you had forgotten Dan--papa thought so, too."

"Forgotten!" exclaimed Betty scornfully. She fell away from the crowd and
Virginia followed her. The two stood leaning against the whitewashed wall
in the dust that still rose from the street. "So you thought I had
forgotten him," said Betty again. She raised her hand to her bosom and
crushed the lace upon her dress. "Well, you were wrong," she added quietly.

Virginia looked at her and smiled. "I am almost glad," she answered in her
sweet girlish voice. "I don't like to have Dan forgotten even if--if he
ought to be."

"I didn't love him because he ought to be loved," said Betty. "I loved him
because I couldn't help it--because he was himself and I was myself, I
suppose. I was born to love him, and to stop loving him I should have to be
born again. I don't care what he does--I don't care what he is even--I
would rather love him than--than be a queen." She held her hands tightly
together. "I would be his servant if he would let me," she went on. "I
would work for him like a slave--but he won't let me. And yet he does love
me just the same--just the same."

"He does--he does," admitted Virginia softly. She had never seen Betty like
this before, and she felt that her sister had become suddenly very strange
and very sacred. Her hands were outstretched to comfort, but Betty turned
gently away from her and went up the narrow staircase to the bare little
room where the girls slept together.

Alone within the four white walls she moved breathlessly to and fro like a
woodland creature that has been entrapped. At the moment she was telling
herself that she wanted to keep onward with the army; then her courage
would have fluttered upward like the flags. It was not the sound of the
cannon that she dreaded, nor the sight of blood--these would have nerved
her as they nerved the generations at her back--but the folded hands and
the terrible patience that are the woman's share of a war. The old fighting
blood was in her veins--she was as much the child of her father as a son
could have been--and yet while the great world over there was filled with
noise she was told to go into her room and pray. Pray! Why, a man might
pray with his musket in his hand, that was worth while.

In the adjoining room she saw h