She had backed away a little distance from him, looking at him

under brows bent slightly inward, and thinking that she had made no

mistake in her memory of this man. Certainly his features were

altogether too regular, his head and body too perfectly moulded

into that dark and graceful symmetry which she had hitherto vaguely

associated with things purely and mythologically Olympian.

Upright against the doorway, she suddenly recollected with a blush

that she was staring like a schoolgirl, and sat down. And he drew

up a chair before her and seated himself; and then under the

billowy rose crinoline she set her pretty feet close together,

folded her hands, and looked at him with a smiling composure which

she no longer really felt.

"The weather," she repeated, "is unusually warm. Do you think that

Major Anderson will hold out at Sumter? Do you think the fleet is

going to relieve him? Dear me," she sighed, "where will it all

end, Mr. Berkley?"

"In war," he said, also smiling; but neither of them believed it,

or, at the moment, cared. There were other matters

impending--since their first encounter.

"I have thought about you a good deal since Camilla's theatre

party," he said pleasantly.

"Have you?" She scarcely knew what else to say--and regretted

saying anything.

"Indeed I have. I dare not believe you have wasted as much as one

thought on the man you danced with once--and refused ever after."

She felt, suddenly, a sense of uneasiness in being near him.

"Of course I have remembered you, Mr. Berkley," she said with

composure. "Few men dance as well. It has been an agreeable

memory to me."

"But you would not dance with me again."

"I--there were--you seemed perfectly contented to sit out--the

rest--with me."

He considered the carpet attentively. Then looking up with quick,

engaging smile:

"I want to ask you something. May I?"

She did not answer. As it had been from the first time she had

ever seen him, so it was now with her; a confused sense of the

necessity for caution in dealing with a man who had inspired in her

such an unaccountable inclination to listen to what he chose to say.

"What is it you wish to ask?" she inquired pleasantly.

"It is this: are you really surprised that I came? Are you, in

your heart?"

"Did I appear to be very much agitated? Or my heart, either, Mr.

Berkley?" she asked with a careless laugh, conscious now of her

quickening pulses. Outwardly calm, inwardly Irresolute, she faced

him with a quiet smile of confidence.




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