“I believe they expect to go through,” he said, amused.  “That is what they are for.”

The rising uproar around was affecting her; the vivid colour in her lips and cheeks deepened.  Berkley looked at her, at the cockade with its fluttering red-white-and-blue ribbons on her breast, at the clear, fearless eyes now brilliant with excitement and indignation.

“Have you thought of enlisting?” she asked abruptly, without glancing at him.

“Yes,” he said, “I’ve ventured that far.  It’s perfectly safe to think about it.  You have no idea, Mrs. Paige, what warlike sentiments I cautiously entertain in my office chair.”

She turned nervously, with a sunny glint of gold hair and fluttering ribbons: 

“Are you never perfectly serious, Mr. Berkley?  Even at such a moment as this?”

“Always,” he insisted.  “I was only philosophising upon these scenes of inexpensive patriotism which fill even the most urbane and peaceful among us full of truculence. . . .  I recently saw my tailor wearing a sword, attired in the made-to-measure panoply of battle.”

“Did that strike you as humorous?”

“No, indeed; it fitted; I am only afraid he may find a soldier’s grave before I can settle our sartorial accounts.”

There was a levity to his pleasantries which sounded discordant to her amid the solemnly thrilling circumstances impending.  For the flower of the city’s soldiery was going forth to battle—­a thousand gay, thoughtless young fellows summoned from ledger, office, and counting-house; and all about her a million of their neighbours had gathered to see them go.

“Applause makes patriots.  Why should I enlist when merely by cheering others I can stand here and create heroes in battalions?”

“I think,” she said, “that there was once another scoffer who remained to pray.”

As he did not answer, she sent a swift side glance at him, found him tranquilly surveying the crowd below where, at the corner of Canal and Broadway, half a dozen Zouaves, clothed in their characteristic and brilliant uniforms and wearing hairy knapsacks trussed up behind, were being vociferously acclaimed by the people as they passed, bayonets fixed.

“More heroes,” he observed, “made immortal while you wait.”

And now Ailsa became aware of a steady, sustained sound audible above the tumult around them; a sound like surf washing on a distant reef.

“Do you hear that?  It’s like the roar of the sea,” she said.  “I believe they’re coming; I think I caught a strain of military music a moment ago!”

They rose on tiptoe, straining their ears; even the skylarking gamins who had occupied the stage top behind them, and the driver, who had reappeared, drunk, and resumed his reins and seat, stood up to listen.

Above the noise of the cheering, rolling steadily toward them over the human ocean, came the deadened throbbing of drums.  A far, thin strain of military music rose, was lost, rose again; the double thudding of the drums sounded nearer; the tempest of cheers became terrific.  Through it, at intervals, they could catch the clear marching music of the 7th as two platoons of police, sixty strong, arrived, forcing their way into view, followed by a full company of Zouaves.