up against the
fact that he was in love.

When he took her warm hand in his to press it for the last time, he felt
an almost resistless impulse to bend and kiss her. From that moment he
realized that he was in love--madly, hopelessly, desperately.

He had left the car and hurried back to his post in the State
Department, his heart beating like a trip hammer. It was a novel
experience. He had never taken girls seriously before. The last girl on
earth he had ever meant to take seriously was this slip of a Southern
enthusiast. For a moment he was furious at the certainty of his abject
surrender. He lifted his eyes to the big columns of the Confederate
Capitol and laughed:

"Come, come, man--common sense--this is a joke! Forget it all. To your
work--your country calls!"

Somehow the country refused to issue but one call--the old eternal cry
of love. Wherever he turned, Jennie's brown eyes were smiling into his.
He looked at the Confederate Capitol to inspire him to deeds of daring
and all he could remember was that she was a glorious little rebel with
three brothers fighting for the flag that floated there. All he could
get out of the supreme emblem of the "Rebellion" was that it was her
Capitol and _her_ flag and he loved her.

And then he laughed for sheer joy that love had come into his heart and
made the world beautiful. He surrendered himself body and soul to the
madness and wonder of it all.

If he could only see his mother and tell her, she could understand. He
couldn't talk to the bundle of nerves Miss Van Lew had become. Her eyes
burned each day with a deeper and deeper light of fanatical patriotism.
He had yielded none of his own enthusiasm. But this secret of his heart
was too sweet to be shared by a comrade in arms.

Only God's eye, or the soul of the mother who bore him, could understand
what he felt. The realization of his love for Jennie brought a new fear
into his heart. His nerve was put daily to supreme test in the dangerous
work in which he was engaged. A single mistake would start an
investigation sure to end with a rope around his neck. Love had given
life a new meaning. The chatter of the squirrels in the Capitol Square
was all about their homes and babies in the tree tops. The song of
birds in the old flower garden on Church Hill made his heart thump with
a joy that was agony. The flowers were just bursting into full bloom and
their perfume filled the air with the lazy dreaming of the southern