“I’ll get you an ice at once.”

“Oh, I don’t mean that.  I mean substantial things!”

“A healthy appetite doesn’t keep a girl from being an angel.”

“When men marry us they find out that we’re not angels.”

“The word ‘angel’ is with me merely a figure of speech.  I don’t want any real angel.  I want my wife, if I ever marry, to be thoroughly human.”

Harry’s progress was rapid.  A handsome figure and face, and an ingenuous manner made him a favorite.  After midnight he wandered into a room where older men were smoking and talking.  They were mostly officers, some of high rank, one a general, and they talked of that which they could never get wholly from their minds, the war.  All knew Harry, and, as he wanted fresh air, they gave him a place by a window which looked upon a small court.

Harry was tired.  In dancing he had been compelled to bring into play muscles long unused, and he luxuriated in the cushioned chair, while the pleasant night breeze blew upon him.  They were discussing Lee’s probable plans to meet Meade, who would certainly follow him in time across the Potomac.  They spoke with weight and authority, because they were experienced men who had been in many battles, and they were here on furlough, most of them recovering from wounds.

Harry heard them, but their words were like the flowing of a river.  He paid no heed.  They did not bring the war back to him.  He was thinking of the music and of the brilliant faces of the girls whom he loved collectively.  What that Lawrence girl had said was true.  He was a Virginian as well as a Kentuckian, and the Kentuckians and Virginians were all one big family.  All those pretty Virginia girls were his cousins.  It might run to the thirty-second degree, but they were his cousins just the same, and he would claim them with confidence.

He smiled and his eyelids drooped a little.  It was rather dark outside, and he was looking directly into the court in which rosebushes and tall flowering plants grew.  A shadow passed.  He did not see whence it came or went, but he sat up and laughed at himself for dozing and conjuring up phantoms when he was at his first real ball in ages.

All the civilians had gone out and only five or six of the officers, the most important, were left.  Their talk had grown more eager, and on the center of the table around which they sat lay a large piece of white canvas upon which they were drawing a map expressing their collective opinion.  Every detail was agreed upon, after much discussion, and Harry, as much interested as they, began to watch, while the lines grew upon the canvas.  He ventured no opinion, being so much younger than the others.

“We don’t know, of course, exactly what General Lee will do,” said a colonel, “but we do know that he’s always dangerous.  He invariably acts on the offensive, even if he’s retreating.  I should think that he’d strike Meade about here.”