ne
out there was more than ever to her an inferno because the flaming pit
was now enclosed by outer blackness, completely cut off from all else--a
world to itself in which all the passions strove, and none could tell to
which would fall the mastery.

She felt for the moment horror of both sides, North and South alike, and
she wished only that the unnatural combat would cease; she did not care
then--a brief emotion, though--which should prove the victor.

It was a dark and solemn night that came down over the Wilderness and
the two hundred thousand who had fought all day and still fought amid
its thickets. Never before had that thin, red soil--redder now--borne
such a crop, and many were glad that the darkness hid the sight from
their enemies. The two Generals, the master minds who had propelled
their mighty human machines against each other, were trying to reckon
their losses--with the battle still in progress--and say to themselves
whether they had won or lost. But this battlefield was no smooth and
easy chessboard where the pawns might be moved as one wills and be
counted as they fell, but a wilderness of thickets and forests and hills
and swamps and valleys where the vast lines bent or twisted or
interlaced and were lost in the shades and the darkness. Count and
reckon as they would, the two Generals, equal in battle, face to face
for the first time--could not give the total of the day. It was still an
unadded sum, and the guns, despite the night, were steadily contributing
new figures. This was the flaw in their arithmetic; nothing was
complete, and they saw that they would have to begin again to-morrow.
So, with this day's work yet unfinished, they began to prepare, sending
for new regiments and brigades, massing more cannon, and planning
afresh.

But all these things were unknown to Helen as she sat there at the
window with Mrs. Markham. Her thoughts wandered again to Wood, that
splendid figure on horseback, and she sought to identify him there among
the black marionettes that gyrated against the red background. But with
the advance of night the stage was becoming more indistinct, the light
shed over it more pallid and shifting, and nothing certain could be
traced there. All the black figures were mixed in a confused whirl, and
where stood the South and where the North neither Helen nor Mrs. Markham
could tell.

The night was thick and hot, rank with vapours and mists and odours that
oppressed throat and nost