“But I didn’t—­it was not that!”

“Then what was it?”

She remained silent, but now I was fully aroused.

“Billie,” my voice low, and barely reaching her ear.  “When I rode away that night I knew I loved you.  I was a Yankee soldier, but I had been captured by a Rebel.  I scarcely possessed a hope then of meeting you again, but I did believe you already realized what kind of a man Le Gaire was.  I could not conceive that you would marry him, and I swore to myself to seek you out at the earliest moment possible.  Don’t draw back from me, dear, but listen—­you must listen.  This means as much to you as to me.”

“But I cannot—­I must not.”

“What is there to prevent?  Your pride of the South?  Your adherence to the Confederacy?  I care nothing for that; we are not Rebel and Yankee, but man and woman.  As to Le Gaire, I have no respect for his claim upon you, nor would your father have if he knew the truth.  It is all an accident our meeting again, but it was one of God’s accidents.  I thought I was sent here to capture Johnston, but my real mission was to save you.  I’ve gone too far now to retreat.  So have you.”

“I?” in half indignant surprise.

“Dear, do you suppose I would dare this if I doubted you?—­if I did not believe your heart was mine?”

“And if convinced otherwise, what would you do?”

The tone in which this was spoken, the swift question startled me.

“Do?  Why, there would be nothing to do, except return.”

“Leaving your prisoners?”

I glanced out through the nearest window, noting the sky growing gray in the east, and suddenly realized that, if we succeeded in getting away ourselves now, the transporting of Confederates under guard would be scarcely possible.  She seemed to read all this in my face, before I could frame an answer.

“I have listened to you, Lieutenant Galesworth,” she burst forth, “because I had to.  You have had everything your own way thus far, but now it is my turn.  I am a woman, a woman of the South, a soldier’s daughter, and am not likely to surrender my heart, my principles, my life before such an assault.  You have taken too much for granted; because I have not wished to hurt you, you have believed my silence indicative of love; you have construed friendship into devotion.  Now it is my turn to speak.  I did like you, and helped you; without doubt I was indiscreet, but I thought only of friendship, supposing we would part then, never to meet again.  Under those circumstances,” and her voice faltered slightly, “it may be that I said and did more than I should, enough—­well, enough to encourage you.  But—­but I thought it all over with.  You knew of Captain Le Gaire, and that should have been sufficient.  Yet you come here, in face of all this, and—­and dare to make love to me.”

“But you are forgetting what I overheard—­the fact that I know your real feelings toward Le Gaire.”