d Celia Craig.

"Colonel Arran," she said coolly, "is it necessa'y fo' me to
request yo' permission befo' I am allowed to move Philip Berkley to
my own house?"

"No, madam. The brigade surgeon is in charge. But I think I can
secure for you the necessary authority to do so if you wish."

She thanked him haughtily, and passed on; and he turned and walked
out, impassive, silent, a stoop to his massive shoulders which had
already become characteristic.

And that evening Berkley lay at Paigecourt in the chintz-hung
chamber where, as a girl, his mother had often slept, dreaming the
dreams that haunt young hearts when the jasmine fragrance grows
heavier in the stillness and the magnolia's snowy chalice is
offered to the moon, and the thrush sings in the river thickets,
and the fire-fly's lamp drifts through the fairy woods.

Celia told him this on the third day, late in the afternoon--so
late that the westering sun was already touching the crests of the
oak woods, and all the thickets had turned softly purple like the
bloom on a plum; the mounting scent of phlox from the garden was
growing sweeter, and the bats fluttered and dipped and soared in
the calm evening sky.

She had been talking of his mother when she was Constance Paige and
wore a fillet over her dark ringlets and rode to hounds at ten with
the hardest riders in all Prince Clarence County.

"And this was her own room, Phil; nothing in it has been moved,
nothing changed; this is the same bird and garland chintz, matching
the same wall-paper; this is the same old baid with its fo' ca'ved
columns and its faded canopy, the same gilt mirror where she looked
and saw reflected there the loveliest face in all the valley. . . .
A child's face, Phil--even a child's face when she drew aside her
bridal veil to look. . . . Ah--God--" She sighed, looking down at
her clasped hands, "if youth but knew--if youth but knew!"

He lay silent, the interminable rattle of picket firing in his
ears, his face turned toward the window. Through it he could see
green grass, a magnolia in bloom, and a long flawless spray of
Cherokee roses pendant from the gallery.

Celia sighed, waited for him to speak, sighed again, and picked up
the Baltimore newspaper to resume her reading if he desired.

Searching the columns listlessly, she scanned the headings, glanced
over the letter press in silence, then turned the crumpled page.
Presently she frowned.

"Listen to this, Philip; they s