The moon was high as the carriage whirled him out of the still stifling avenues towards the Soldiers’ Home—­a sylvan suburb frequented by cabinet ministers and the President—­where the good Senator had “decreed,” like Kubla Khan, “a stately pleasure dome,” to entertain his friends and partisans.  As they approached the house, the trembling light like fireflies through the leaves, the warm silence broken only by a military band playing a drowsy waltz on the veranda, and the heavy odors of jessamine in the air, thrilled Brant with a sense of shame as he thought of his old comrades in the field.  But this was presently dissipated by the uniforms that met him in the hall, with the presence of some of his distinguished superiors.  At the head of the stairs, with a circling background of the shining crosses and ribbons of the diplomatic corps, stood Susy—­her bare arms and neck glittering with diamonds, her face radiant with childlike vivacity.  A significant pressure of her little glove as he made his bow seemed to be his only welcome, but a moment later she caught his arm.  “You’ve yet to know him,” she said in a half whisper; “he thinks a good deal of himself—­just like Jim.  But he makes others believe it, and that’s where poor Jim slipped up.”  She paused before the man thus characteristically disposed of, and presented Brant.  It was the man he had seen before—­material, capable, dogmatic.  A glance from his shrewd eyes—­accustomed to the weighing of men’s weaknesses and ambitions—­and a few hurried phrases, apparently satisfied him that Brant was not just then important or available to him, and the two men, a moment later, drifted easily apart.  Brant sauntered listlessly through the crowded rooms, half remorsefully conscious that he had taken some irrevocable step, and none the less assured by the presence of two or three reporters and correspondents who were dogging his steps, or the glance of two or three pretty women whose curiosity had evidently been aroused by the singular abstraction of this handsome, distinguished, but sardonic-looking officer.  But the next moment he was genuinely moved.

A tall young woman had just glided into the centre of the room with an indolent yet supple gracefulness that seemed familiar to him.  A change in her position suddenly revealed her face.  It was Miss Faulkner.  Previously he had known her only in the riding habit of Confederate gray which she had at first affected, or in the light muslin morning dress she had worn at Gray Oaks.  It seemed to him, to-night, that the studied elegance of her full dress became her still more; that the pretty willfulness of her chin and shoulders was chastened and modified by the pearls round her fair throat.  Suddenly their eyes met; her face paled visibly; he fancied that she almost leaned against her companion for support; then she met his glance again with a face into which the color had as suddenly rushed, but with eyes that seemed to be appealing to him even to the point of pain and fright.  Brant was not conceited; he could see that the girl’s agitation was not the effect of any mere personal influence in his recognition, but of something else.  He turned hastily away; when he looked around again she was gone.