“I beg you to get up; we cold-blooded people up here don’t understand that old-fashioned way.”  As he started back with something like a groan, she gave him a quick glance that electrified him.  He seized her hand before she could snatch it away and pressed it to his lips.

“Pray be serious.  You are too young to talk of love.”

“I am twenty-two; my father was married at nineteen.”

“No, dear Vincent, don’t talk of this now.  You don’t know your own mind yet.  I am sure that when you go home and think over the matter you will see that it would be impossible, but, even if you were sure of yourself, I never could think of it.  You are going to take up arms against all I hold dear and sacred.  If I were your affianced, with the love for you that you deserve, I would break the pledge when you joined in arms against my family and country.”

“You have known for years, Olympia, that I loved you; that I was only waiting to finish college to tell you of my love.  Why didn’t you tell me—­”

“Tell you what?”

“I say, Polly,” Jack cried, bursting in, radiant and eager.  “I have the last man of the one hundred—­” Observing Vincent he stopped.  It seemed to him a sort of treason to talk of his regiment before the man who was so soon to be in the ranks against them.  “Oh, I can’t tell our secrets before the enemy,” he ended, jocosely.  The word went to Vincent’s heart like the prod of sharp steel.  He gave Olympia one pathetic glance, and, without a word, hastened from the room.  In spite of a great many adroit efforts, Vincent could get no further speech with Olympia alone that night.  Early in the morning he was driven, with Mrs. Sprague and Jack to the station.  Olympia sent down excuses and adieus, alleging some not incredible ailing of the sort that is always gallantly at the disposal of damsels not minded to do things people expect.

Presently, when the lorn lover had been gone three days, a letter came from Washington to Olympia, and, though it was handed to her by her mother, the maiden made no proffer to confide its contents to the naturally curious parent.  But we, who can look over the reader’s shoulder, need not be kept in the dark.

“Dear Olympia” (the letter said), “it was hard to leave without a last word.  All the way here I have been thinking of our little talk—­if that can be called a talk where one side has lost his senses and the other is trifling or mystifying.  I told you that I loved you.  I thrill even yet with the joy of that.  You are so wayward and capricious, so coy, that I began to fear that I never could get your car long enough to tell you what I felt you must have long known.  You didn’t say that you loved me; but, dear Olympia, neither did you say that you did not.  The rose has fallen on the hem of your robe.  When its fragrance steals into your senses, you will stoop and put the blossom in your bosom.  It is the war that divides us, you say.  It will soon pass.