"What?" he challenged.
"The battles won over himself," she answered slowly. "His upright life, his unsullied honor toward all those women whom he made captive. In battles of that kind there are great generals today. In that respect everyone can be a Pompey. I wish I could feel," she thought again of the Colonel's troubled face, "that you, without any doubt at all, were going to be one!"
"I see what you mean," at last he said, turning back to the book; but instantly pushed it away with a gesture of impatience and gazed moodily into the high polish of the mahogany table, as though somewhere down in its ancient graining an answer might be found to his troubled thoughts.
She watched him, with a curious look of interest.
"I don't understand it," he finally murmured. "By that very teachin', we're branded worse than any kind of beasts. There's somethin' wrong, Miss Jane; there's somethin' wrong!" A soft and peculiar light, which she had often seen when his pupils began to dilate and contract, fitfully crossed and recrossed them.
"I don't think I understand you," she replied.
"Then look!" he turned quickly. Again the curious light. She felt herself being charmed by it, and wondered if a quail might feel so while crouching before the point of a bird-dog. In a whisper-haunted voice he began to speak; "It's a summer night. A lazy mist hangs in the valley. I can see it—I've seen it most a thousand times! It hangs from the mountain's waist like a skirt on a half dressed woman, and above is all naked in the starlight. The air is still and clear, up thar," he slipped unconsciously into the familiar dialect as he grew more intense, "'n' the mist below is smooth 'n' white. Ye'd think ye could walk acrost on hit. No sign or sound of the world kin touch this place, 'n' one might as well be standin' on some crag that overlooks eternity. Back in a cave a wild-cat wakes, 'n' sniffs the air; 'n' then he yawns, 'n' purrs, 'n' gits up 'n' walks with soft, padded feet ter look out on this silence. He sniffs the air, 'n' purrs agin, then lays his ears down flat 'n' sends a cry a-tearin' 'crost the space. I've seen 'im; I've heerd 'im; I've laid back outen the wind 'n' watched 'im. He crouches 'n' waits. Soft, but nervous-like, his claws dig in 'n' out the airth. Then an answer comes, floatin' like a far-off cry of a child in pain. With ears still tight ag'inst his head, he freezes closter ter the ground, lashin' his stumpy tail from side ter side, 'n' purrin' deeper. Then he cries agin, 'n' waits. Purty soon, from out that mist, the answer comes agin, 'n' like a flash he's gone. Has he done wrong?"
He paused, still looking at her; and she, too strangely fascinated to turn away her eyes, stared back with parted lips.
"When the fu'st red bars of dawn flash up the sky," he went on, in the same mysterious voice, "showin' folks down in the valley that a day has come, a bird pulls his head out from his wing, 'n' blinks. I've seen 'em; I've laid 'n' watched 'em 'most a thousand times. He blinks agin, 'n' finds hisse'f a-lookin' squar in ter a pair of twinklin' eyes that seems ter've been awake all night, jest a-watchin', with sly longin', from 'tween two leaves. Maybe he'd seen those eyes afore, but not jest like this. Maybe only yestidday he passed 'em by—or even drove 'em away from food;—but somethin' strange is in 'em now, somethin' strange that happened in the night. So he gives a jump at 'em, jest like a spring he didn't know was in his legs had been let loose; 'n' she laughs 'n' flies away, I've seen it happen 'most a thousand times. From tree ter tree, from bush ter bush, he follers. He stops; she stops. But when he tries agin, she flies. The next day they're buildin' a nest. Have they done wrong?"
He paused, but she did not take her eyes from his face. She might not have known his voice had ceased by the way she looked deep into his pupils—deep into the realm of his fancies. When he did speak again his words were scarcely audible: