She lifted her face for a moment and saw beyond the room, through the night, and beyond the stars a Presence Divine, to Whom thousands of other women in that dying Confederacy made daily, hourly, and momentary prayers. Less exalted, more human, less touched, the boy bowed his head, not without his own prayer, too.
“But you wanted to see me, Wilfred, Martha said,” the woman presently began.
“Yes, mother, I——”
The boy stopped and the woman was in no hurry to press him. She divined what was coming and would fain have avoided it all.
“I am thankful there is a lull in the cannonading,” she said, listening. “I wonder why it has stopped?”
“It has not stopped,” said Wilfred, “at least it has gone on all evening.”
“I don’t hear it now.”
“No, but you will—there!”
“Yes, but compared to what it was yesterday—you know how it shook the house—and Howard suffered so through it.”
“So did I,” said the boy in a low voice fraught with passion.