Yet Flora knew; knew by herself; by a cold rage in her own fair bosom, where every faculty stood gayly alert for each least turn of incident, to foil or use it, while they talked lightly of Virginia's great step, or of the night's loveliness, counting the stars. "How small they look," she said, "how calm how still."
"Yes, and then to think what they really are! so fearfully far from small--or cold--or still!"
"Like ourselves," she prompted.
"Yes!" cried the transparent soldier. "At our smallest the smallest thing in us is that we should feel small. And how deep down are we calm or cold? Miss Flora, I once knew a girl--fine outside, inside. Lovers -she had to keep a turnstile. I knew a pair of them. To hear those two fellows separately tell what she was like, you couldn't have believed them speaking of the same person. The second one thought the first had--sort o'--charted her harbor for him; but when he came to sail in, 'pon my soul, if every shoal on the chart wasn't deep water, and every deep water a fortified shore--ha, ha, ha!"
Flora's smile was lambent. "Yes," she said, "that sweet Anna she's very intric-ate." Hilary flamed and caught his breath, but she met his eyes with the placidity of the sky above them.
Suddenly he laughed: "Now I know what I am! Miss Flora, I--I wish you'd be my pilot."
She gave one resenting sparkle, but then shook her averted head tenderly, murmured "Impossible," and smiled.
"You think there's no harbor there?"
"Listen," she said.
"Yes, I hear it, a horse."