He stopped.  She walked on, silent, in her turn.

“Say no, as a matter of course, and end it!” said he, bitterly.

She drew a long breath, as if heaving off a weight.

“I cannot—­dare not say it.”

“It?  Which of the two? yes, or no?”

She was silent.

He stopped, and spoke calmly and slowly.  “Say that again, and tell me that I am not dreaming.  You? the admired! the worshipped! the luxurious!—­and no blame to you that you are what you were born—­could you endure a little parsonage, the teaching village school-children, tending dirty old women, and petty cares the whole year round?”

“Mr. Headley,” answered she, slowly and calmly, in her turn, “I could endure a cottage,—­a prison, I fancy, at moments,—­to escape from this world, of which I am tired, which will soon be tired of me:  from women who envy me, impute to me ambitions as base as their own; from men who admire—­not me, for they do not know me, and never will—­but what in me —­I hate them!—­will give them pleasure.  I hate it all, despise it all; despise myself for it all every morning when I wake!  What does it do for me, but rouse in me the very parts of my own character which are most despicable, most tormenting?  If it goes on, I feel I could become as frivolous, as mean, aye, as wicked as the worst.  You do not know—­you do not know—.  I have envied the nuns their convents.  I have envied Selkirk his desert island.  I envy now the milkmaids there below:  anything to escape and be in earnest, anything for some one to teach me to be of use!  Yes, this cholera—­and this war—­though only, only its coming shadow has passed over me,—­and your words too—­” cried she, and stopped and hesitated, as if afraid to tell too much—­“they have wakened me—­to a new life—­at least to the dream of a new life!”

“Have you not Major Campbell?” said Headley, with a terrible effort of will.

“Yes—­but has he taught me?  He is dear, and good, and wise; but he is too wise, too great for me.  He plays with me as a lion might with a mouse; he is like a grand angel far above in another planet, who can pity and advise, but who cannot—­What am I saying?” and she covered her face with her hand.

She dropped her glove as she did so.  Headley picked it up and gave it to her:  as he did so their hands met; and their hands did not part again.

“You know that I love you, Valencia St. Just.”

“Too well! too well!”

“But you know, too, that you do not love me.”

“Who told you so?  What do you know?  What do I know?  Only that I long for some one to make me—­to make me as good as you are!” and she burst into tears.

“Valencia, will you trust me?”

“Yes!” cried she, looking up at him suddenly:  “if you will not go to the war.”

“No—­no—­no!  Would you have me turn traitor and coward to God; and now, of all moments in my life?”