, stood still a moment, then with a gesture, weary and determined,
turned to descend the hill--on the side away from Greenwood, toward a
cross-country road. She called to him. "Richard!"

It was rapture--all beneath the rising sun forgotten save only this
gold-lit hilltop, with its tree from Eden garden! But since it was
earth, and Paradise not yet real, and there were checks and bars enough
in their human lot, they came back from that seraph flight. This was the
lone tree hill above Greenwood, and a November day, though gold-touched,
and Philip Deaderick must get back to the section of Pelham's artillery
refitting at Gordonsville.--"What do you mean? You are a soldier--you
are back in the army?--but you have another name? Oh, Richard, I see, I
see! Oh, I might have known! A gunner with Pelham. Oh, my gunner with
Pelham, why did you not come before?"

Cleave wrung her hands, clasped in his, then bent and kissed them.
"Judith, I will speak to you as to a comrade, because you would be the
truest comrade ever man had! What would you do--what would you have
done--in my place? What would you do now, in my place, but say--but say,
'I love you; let me go'?"

"I?" said Judith. "What would I have done? I would have reentered the
army as you have reentered it. I would serve again as you are serving
again. If it were necessary--Oh, I see that it was necessary!--I would
serve disguised as you are disguised. But--but--when it came to Judith
Cary--"

"Judith, say that it was not you and I, but some other disgraced soldier
and one of your sisters--"

"You are not a disgraced soldier. The innocent cannot be disgraced."

"Who knows that I was innocent? My mother, and you, Judith, know it; my
kinspeople and certain friends believe it; but all the rest of the
country--the army, the people--they don't believe it. Let my name be
known to-morrow, and by evening a rougher dismissal than before! Do you
not see, do you not see, Judith?"

"I see partly. I see that you must serve. I see that you walk with
dangers. I see that--that you could not even write. I see that I must
possess my soul in patience. I see that we must wait--Oh, God, it is all
waiting, waiting, waiting! But I do not see--and I _refuse_ to see,
Richard--anything at the end of it all but love, happiness, union, home
for you and me!"

He held her close. "Judith, I do not know the right. I am not sure that
I see the right, my soul is so tempest-tossed. That day at White Oa