“Oh! my God, I thought I hated him!”

The Colonel knelt beside her.  He took her hand and she let him keep it.  She, looked down into his face, with a pitiable tenderness, and said in a weak voice.

“And you do love me a little?”

The Colonel vowed and protested.  He kissed her hand and her lips.  He swore his false soul into perdition.

She wanted love, this woman.  Was not her love for George Selby deeper than any other woman’s could be?  Had she not a right to him?  Did he not belong to her by virtue of her overmastering passion?  His wife—­she was not his wife, except by the law.  She could not be.  Even with the law she could have no right to stand between two souls that were one.  It was an infamous condition in society that George should be tied to her.

Laura thought this, believed it; because she desired to believe it.  She came to it as an original propositions founded an the requirements of her own nature.  She may have heard, doubtless she had, similar theories that were prevalent at that day, theories of the tyranny of marriage and of the freedom of marriage.  She had even heard women lecturers say, that marriage should only continue so long as it pleased either party to it —­for a year, or a month, or a day.  She had not given much heed to this, but she saw its justice now in a dash of revealing desire.  It must be right.  God would not have permitted her to love George Selby as she did, and him to love her, if it was right for society to raise up a barrier between them.  He belonged to her.  Had he not confessed it himself?

Not even the religious atmosphere of Senator Dilworthy’s house had been sufficient to instill into Laura that deep Christian principle which had been somehow omitted in her training.  Indeed in that very house had she not heard women, prominent before the country and besieging Congress, utter sentiments that fully justified the course she was marking out for herself.

They were seated now, side by side, talking with more calmness.  Laura was happy, or thought she was.  But it was that feverish sort of happiness which is snatched out of the black shadow of falsehood, and is at the moment recognized as fleeting and perilous, and indulged tremblingly.  She loved.  She was loved.  That is happiness certainly.  And the black past and the troubled present and the uncertain future could not snatch that from her.

What did they say as they sat there?  What nothings do people usually say in such circumstances, even if they are three-score and ten?  It was enough for Laura to hear his voice and be near him.  It was enough for him to be near her, and avoid committing himself as much as he could.  Enough for him was the present also.  Had there not always been some way out of such scrapes?