The charm was snapped and Betty fell back into time and place.
“Oh, yes, I have seen—some one,” her voice thrilled as she spoke. “I saw him as clearly as I see you; he was all in sunshine and there was a flag close above his head. He looked up and smiled at me. Yes, I saw him! I saw him!”
“It was Dan,” said Virginia—not as a question, but in a wondering assent. “Why, Betty, I thought you had forgotten Dan—papa thought so, too.”
“Forgotten!” exclaimed Betty scornfully. She fell away from the crowd and Virginia followed her. The two stood leaning against the whitewashed wall in the dust that still rose from the street. “So you thought I had forgotten him,” said Betty again. She raised her hand to her bosom and crushed the lace upon her dress. “Well, you were wrong,” she added quietly.
Virginia looked at her and smiled. “I am almost glad,” she answered in her sweet girlish voice. “I don't like to have Dan forgotten even if—if he ought to be.”
“I didn't love him because he ought to be loved,” said Betty. “I loved him because I couldn't help it—because he was himself and I was myself, I suppose. I was born to love him, and to stop loving him I should have to be born again. I don't care what he does—I don't care what he is even—I would rather love him than—than be a queen.” She held her hands tightly together. “I would be his servant if he would let me,” she went on. “I would work for him like a slave—but he won't let me. And yet he does love me just the same—just the same.”
“He does—he does,” admitted Virginia softly. She had never seen Betty like this before, and she felt that her sister had become suddenly very strange and very sacred. Her hands were outstretched to comfort, but Betty turned gently away from her and went up the narrow staircase to the bare little room where the girls slept together.
Alone within the four white walls she moved breathlessly to and fro like a woodland creature that has been entrapped. At the moment she was telling herself that she wanted to keep onward with the army; then her courage would have fluttered upward like the flags. It was not the sound of the cannon that she dreaded, nor the sight of blood—these would have nerved her as they nerved the generations at her back—but the folded hands and the terrible patience that are the woman's share of a war. The old fighting blood was in her veins—she was as much the child of her father as a son could have been—and yet while the great world over there was filled with noise she was told to go into her room and pray. Pray! Why, a man might pray with his musket in his hand, that was worth while.
In the adjoining room she saw her mother sitting in a square of sunlight with her open Bible on her knees.
“Oh, speak, mamma!” she called half angrily. “Move, do anything but sit so still. I can't bear it!” She caught her breath sharply, for with her words a low sound like distant thunder filled the room and the little street outside. As she clung with both hands to the window it seemed to her that a gray haze had fallen over the sunny valley. “Some one is dead,” she said almost calmly, “that killed how many?”