ward Alexandria, vivid squares of scarlet in a green field,
dimmed very little by the distance. Those were zouaves--her own,
or perhaps the 5th, or the 9th from Roanoke, or perhaps the 14th
Brooklyn--she could not know, but she never took her eyes from the
distant blocks and oblongs of red against the green until the woods
engulfed them.

Ailsa still lay heavily asleep. Celia opened the door and called
her to the window.

"Honey-bud, darling," she whispered tearfully, "did you know the
Lancers are leaving?"

Ailsa's eyes flew wide open:

"Not _his_ regiment!"

"Are there two?"

"Yes," said Ailsa, frightened. "That must be the 6th
Pennsylvania. . . . Because I think--somebody would have told
me--Colonel Arran----"

She stared through eyes from which the mist of slumber had entirely
cleared away. Then she sprang from her bed to the window:

"Oh--_oh_!" she said half to herself, "he wouldn't go away without
saying something to me! He couldn't! . . . And--oh, dear--oh
dear, their pennons _are_ swallow-tailed and scarlet! It looks
like his regiment--it does--it does! . . . But he wouldn't go
without speaking to me----"

Celia turned and looked at her.

"Do you mean Colonel Arran?" And saw that she did not.

For a while they stood there silently together, the soft spring
wind blowing over their bare necks and arms, stirring the frail,
sheer fabric of their night-robes.

Suddenly the stirring music of cavalry trumpets along the road
below startled them; they turned swiftly to look out upon a torrent
of scarlet pennons and glancing lance points--troop after troop of
dancing horses and blue-clad riders, their flat forage caps set
rakishly, bit and spur and sabre hilt glistening, the morning sun
flashing golden on the lifted trumpets.

On they came, on, on, horses' heads tossing, the ground shaking
with the mellow sound of four thousand separate hoofs,--and passed,
troop on troop, a lengthening, tossing wave of scarlet across the
verdure.

Then, far away in the column, a red lance pennon swung in a circle,
a blue sleeve shot up in salute and adieu. And Ailsa knew that
Berkley had seen her, and that the brightness of the young world
was leaving her, centred there in the spark of fire that tipped his
lance.

Now she saw her lover turn in his saddle and, sitting so, ride on
and on, his tall lance slanting from stirrup boot to arm loop, the
morning sun bright across his face, and touching each metal