ptain, a little behind,
eyed her critically from head to foot, his mouth drawn up for a
meditative whistle, as she stood on tiptoe, her arm stretched up among
the creamy buds. The loose sleeve fell back: the arm was round and
white.

"Very good! ve-ry good!" the whistle meant; "and I know the points of a
fine woman as well as any of these young fellows."

Two young fellows, coming up, lingered to glance at the jimp waist and
finely-turned ankle, with a shrug to each other when, passing by, they
saw her homely face.

The captain gallantly relieved her of her flowers, and paraded down the
road, head up, elbows well out, as he used, thirty years ago, to escort
pretty Virginie Morot in the French quartier of New Orleans. It was long
since he had relished conversation as he did with this frank, generous
creature. No coquetry about her! It was like talking to a clever,
candid boy. Every man felt, in fact, with Cornelia, that she was only a
younger brother. He liked the hearty grasp of her big white hand; he
liked her honest, downright way of stating things, and her perfect
indifference to her own undeniable ugliness. Now, any other woman of her
age--thirty, eh? (with a quick critical glance)--would dye her hair: she
never cared to hide the streaks of gray through the yellow. She had
evidently long ago made up her mind that love and marriage were
impossible for women as unprepossessing as she: she stepped freely up,
therefore, to level ground with men, and struck hands and made
friendships with them precisely as if she were one of themselves.

The captain quite glowed with the fervor of this friendship as he
marched along talking energetically. A certain subtle instinct of
kinship between them seemed to him to trench upon the supernatural: it
covered every thought and taste. She had a keen wit, she grasped his
finest ideas: not even Jane laughed at his jokes more heartily. She
appreciated his inventive ability: he was not sure that Jane did. There
were topics, too, on which he could touch with this mature companion
that were caviare to Jane. It was no such mighty matter if he blurted
out an oath before her, as he used to do in the army. Something, indeed,
in the very presence of the light, full figure keeping step with his
own, in the heavy odor of the magnolias and the steady regard of the
yellowish-brown eyes, revived within him an old self which belonged to
those days in the army--a self which was not the man whom his d