eated against a tree, stone dead, one hand
stiffened over the Mexican war medal at his throat. Curt says his
face was calm, almost smiling. Camilla has his sword and medals.

"Did you know that your friend John Casson was dead? I was with
him; I did not know he was a friend of yours. He displayed the
same patience, the same desire not to be troublesome that so many
badly wounded do.

"Letty asked me to say that a zouave of the 5th Regiment, a Mr.
Cortlandt, was also killed. So many, many people I knew or had
heard of have been killed or have died of disease since the war
began. One sees a great many people wearing mourning in the
city--crape is so common, on sword-hilts, on arms, veils, gowns,
bonnets.

"Letty made the loveliest bride you or I ever beheld. Usually
brides do not look their best, but Letty was the most charming,
radiant, bewildering creature--and so absurdly young--as though
suddenly she had dropped a few years and was again beginning that
girlhood which I sometimes thought she had never had.

"Dr. Benton is a darling. He looks twenty years younger and wears
a monocle! They are back from their honeymoon, and are planning to
offer their services to the great central hospital at Philadelphia.

"Dear, your letter breaking the news to me that Marye Mead was
burned when the cavalry burned Edmund Ruffin's house was no news to
me. I saw it on fire. But, Philip, there was a fiercer flame
consuming me than ever swept that house. I thank God it Is
quenched for ever and that my heart and soul, refreshed, made new,
bear no scars now of that infernal conflagration.

"I sit here at my window and see below me the folds of the dear
flag stirring; in my ears, often, is the noise of drums from the
dusty avenue where new regiments are passing on into the
unknown--no longer the unknown to us--but the saddest of all truths.

"Sometimes Celia comes from the still, leafy seclusion of Fort
Greene Place, to love me, caress me, gently jeer at me for the hint
of melancholy in my gaze, shaming me for a love-sick thing that
droops and pines in the absence of all that animates her soul and
body with the desire to live.

"She is only partly right; I am very tired, Phil. Not that I am
ill. I am well, now. It only needs you. She knows it; I have
always known it. Your love, and loving you, is all that life means
to me.

"I see them all here--Celia fussing with my trousseau, gowns,
stockings, slippers, hoverin