She sat silent for so long that I presently turned from the distant martial spectacle to look at her inquiringly. She smiled, drawing a long breath, and shaking her head.
"I never seem to understand you, Carus," she said. "You have done your part, yet it appears already you are planning to go hunting about for some obliging savage to knock you in the head with a death-maul."
"But the war is not ended, Elsin."
"No, nor like to be until it compasses your death. Then, indeed, will it be ended for me, and the world with it!"
"Why, Elsin!" I laughed, "this is a new note in your voice."
"Is it? Perhaps it is. I told you, Carus, that there is no happiness in love. And, just now, I love you. It is strange, is it not?--when aught threatens you, straightway I begin to sadden and presently fall in love with you; but when there's no danger anywhere, and I have nothing to sadden me, why, I'm not at all sure that I love you enough to pass the balance of the day in your companionship--only that when you are away I desire to know where you are and what you do, and with whom you walk and talk and laugh. Deary me! deary me! I know not what I want, Carus. Let us go to the Blue Fox and drink a dish of tea."
We walked back to the inn through the sweetest evening air that I had breathed in many a day, Elsin stopping now and then to add a blossom to the great armful of wild flowers that she had gathered, I lingering, happy in my freedom as a lad loosed from school, now pausing to skip flat stones across the Bronx, now creeping up to the bank to surprise the trout and see them scatter like winged shadows over the golden gravel, now whistling to imitate that rosy-throated bird who sits so high in his black-and-white livery and sings into happiness all who hear him.
The sun was low over the Jersey highlands; swarms of swallows rose, soared, darted, and dipped in the evening sky. I heard the far camp-bugles playing softly, the dulled roll of drums among the eastern hills; then, as the red sun went out behind the wooded heights, bang! the evening gun's soft thunder shook the silence. And our day was ended.