It could not be said that they kept the peace. Rather they kept a truce, smiling on the part of Selah, coldly dignified on the part of the Colonel.
One evening she came down unexpectedly, and surprised him sneaking in with one enormous bunch of June roses which he had brought in from the farm.
"How lovely, and how sweet of you to think of me!" she exclaimed.
"I did not think of you, and these are not for you. If I'd been gathering flowers for you, Selah, I should have brought bachelor buttons!" he answered as he passed out into the darkened avenue, still carrying his posy ludicrously upside down.
It was another month before she or any one else knew what he did with them.
She had tried to put Bob Sasnett out of her thoughts, but not very successfully. Love is the finest logic nature ever achieves. Nothing, no argument however reasonable and expedient, can withstand it. She thought continually of him as an enemy she must face sooner or later. She loved him—at least she feared that she did. But she was still so young that she longed for sacrifice. She wished to give the whole of her life to women. She could not do that and give the whole of her heart to Bob. She did not reflect that this is the law of women's hearts with which no privilege of citizenship can interfere, and that all the other women for whom she sacrificed herself would be doing just this thing if there should be enough men about to receive their hearts. One thing was certain: she had "grown." She was no longer the girl she had been, shrinking, timid, yet filled with longings to live her own life, to do things. Three months ago she had but one outlook, that of marrying Bob Sasnett and spending the remainder of her days as Mrs. Sasnett's daughter-in-law—that is to say, in total eclipse. Now, she reflected, as the car rolled silently toward the distant courthouse dome, showing gray above the trees of Jordantown, now some day she might become a lawyer and plead a case beneath that very dome!
"Good evening, sweet Goddess of Liberty! Deign to bend your far-seeing eyes upon your humble slave!"
"Mr. Sasnett!" exclaimed Selah, as he advanced from the deep shade of an elm tree beside the road, where he appeared to have been standing.
"No, not 'Mr. Sasnett!' I left him an hour since, vainly contending with Susan Walton, in the effort to gain her consent for the bank to extend the loan to the Acres Mercantile Company another six months, and——"
Selah laughed.