With this I brazenly snatched a pink rose from those within her arm.

“You see Fatty Budlow is coming on,” I remarked of this bit of boldness.

“Let him come—­he shan’t find me in the way.”  This with an effort to seem significant.

“Oh, not at all!” I assured her politely, and with equal subtlety, I believe.

Had I known that this was the last time I should ever look upon Miss Katharine Lansdale, I might have looked longer.  She was well worth seeing for sundry other reasons than her need for common-sense shoes.  But those last times pass so often without our suspecting them!  And it was, indeed, my good fortune never to see her again.  For never again was she to rise, even at her highest, above Miss Kate.

She was even so low as Little Miss when I found her on my porch that afternoon—­a troubled Little Miss, so drooping, so queerly drawn about the eyes, so weak of mouth, so altogether stricken that I was shot through at sight of her.

“I waited here—­to speak alone—­you are late to-day.”

I was early, but if she had waited, she would of course not know this.

“What has happened, Miss Kate?”

“Come here.”

Through my opened door I followed her quick step.

“You were jesting about that this morning,”—­she pointed to the picture, propped open against a book on the mantel; and then, with an effort to steady her voice,—­“you were jesting, and of course you didn’t know—­but you shouldn’t have jested.”

“Can it be you, Miss Kate—­can it really be you?”

“It is, it is—­couldn’t you see?  Tell me quickly—­don’t, don’t jest again!”

“Be sure I shall not.  Sit down.”

But she stood still, with an arm extended to the picture, and again implored me:  “See—­I’m waiting.  Where—­how—­did you get it?”

“Sit down,” I said; and this time she obeyed with a little cry of impatience.

“I’ll try to bring it back,” I said.  “It was that day Sheridan hurried back to find his army broken—­all but beaten.  Just at dark there was a last charge—­a charge that was met.  I went down in it, hearing yells and a spitting fire, but feeling only numbness.  When I woke up the firing was far off.  Near me I could hear a voice, the voice of a young man, I thought, wounded like myself.  I first took him for one of our men.  But his talk undeceived me.  It was the talk of your men, and sorrowful talk.  He was badly hurt; he knew that.  But he was sure of life.  He couldn’t die there like a brute.  He had to go back and he would go back alive and well; for God was a gentleman, whatever else He was, and above practical jokes of that sort.  Then he seemed to know he was losing strength, and he cried out for a picture, as if he must at least have that before he went.  Weak as he was, he tried to turn on his side to search for it.  ’It was here a moment ago,’ he would say; ‘I had it once,’ and he tried to turn again, still crying