“You can’t endure it?” she hesitated as they turned into the walk to the grape arbor.
“No, I can’t, and there are many other Kentuckians who feel as I do. I am going at once to join the southern army, and Corey and Morehead and a dozen others that I know are going too.”
“Father has joined the Union army as a surgeon and I am going as a nurse.”
They had reached the arbor and stood facing each other, she with her armful of lilacs still held against her white dress, both too much absorbed to be quite conscious of their actions. A sober smile curved by ever so little the grim line of his lips.
“Then you will be fighting for your side as well as I for mine, though in a different way. But across the battlefields, Rhoda, I shall hear your heart calling mine, and I shall know too that it is telling me to fight right on.”
“Yes,” she broke out earnestly, “I know that you are fighting for your convictions and your ideals and you will not be worthy of my love if you don’t fight until you either win or are conquered. I don’t want you to compromise, or to yield, until you have fought to the last drop of your strength.”
“It’s going to be a bitter struggle and a long one, whatever the most of them, on both sides, think now. In the South there isn’t much belief that the North will fight, or can fight. But I know better, Rhoda. You have taught me better, you and your father. You have made me understand what determination there is at the bottom of all this.”
“It’s a war between two ideals,” she said, “whatever else they may say it is. But it’s really that, between two ideals of civilization.”
“And men,” he added quickly, “always fight for their ideals as they do for nothing else. It will be to the last gasp.”
She looked away and shuddered. “Oh, it is all so horrible, even to think of! But it is a long and horrible iniquity that has caused it and must now be paid for. Rachel Benedict told me once that we must ourselves pay with sweat and stripes for the evil that we do. I believe it’s true, and the North and the South must pay together for all this long evil of slavery, for they are both responsible. But this war will end it.”