“Vivia,” said Ray, after a pause, “if I should never come back”—­

“You will come back.”

“But if I never did,—­should you greatly care?”

“Beginning to despond!  That is good!  You won’t go, then?”

“If the way lay over the bottomless pit, I should go.”

“And you can’t get free, if you want to?”

“No!”

“Ray, I could easily raise money enough upon my farm to buy”—­

“If you talk so,” said Ray, whipping off the flowers, but looking up at her as he bent, and smiling, “I shall inform against you, and have your farm confiscated.”

“What!  I can’t talk as I please in a free country?  Oh, it’s not free, then!  They’ve discovered at length that there’s something better than freedom.  They sent a woman to prison this spring for eating an orange in the street.  They confiscated a girl’s wedding-gown the other day, and now they’ve confiscated her bridegroom.  Oh, it’s a great cause that can’t get along without my wedding-gown! Noblesse oblige!”

“It takes more wedding-gowns than yours, Vivia.  Dips them in mourning.”

“Pray God it won’t take mine yet!” cried she, with sudden fire.

“Vivia,” said Ray, facing her, “I asked you a question.  Why didn’t you answer it?  Shouldn’t you care?”

“You know, dear child, I should,—­we all should, terribly.”

“But, Vivia, I mean, that you—­that I”—­

He paused, the ardor and eagerness suspended on cheek and lip, for Vivia met his glance and understood its simple speech,—­since in some degree a dark eye lets you into the soul, where a blue one bluffs you off with its blaze, and under all its lucent splendor is as impenetrable as a turquoise.  A girl of more vanity would have waited for plainer words.  But Vivia only placed her warm hand on his, and said gently,—­

“Ray, I love Beltran.”

There was a moment’s quiet, while Ray looked away,—­supporting his chin upon one hand, and a black cloud sweeping torridly down the stern face.  One sharp struggle.  A moment’s quiet.  Into it a wild rose kept shaking sweetness.  After it a vireo broke into tremulous melody, gushing higher, fuller, stronger, clearer.  Ray turned, his eyes wet, his face beaming.  Said he,—­

“I am more glad than if it were myself!”

Then Vivia bent, and, flushed with noble shame, she kissed him on the lips.  A word, a grasp, she was leaning alone over the old stone wall, the birds were piping and fluting about her, and Ray was gone.

* * * * *

A month of rushing over land and lake, of resting at the very spots where he and Beltran had stayed together three years ago, of repeating the brief strolls they took, of reading again and again that last note, and Ray had crossed the great river of the West, and reached the headquarters of his regiment.  There, induing their uniforms, and training their horses, all of which were yet to be shod, they brushed about the country, and skirmished with guerrillas, until going into camp for thorough drill preparatory to active service.