Again she read the soldier's eyes. God! he was comparing her changed countenance--a fool could see he was!--with Anna's! both smitten with affliction, but the abiding peace of truth in one, the abiding war of falsehood in the other. So would Kincaid do if he were here! But the stage waited: "Ah, Colonel, Anna! poor Anna!" Might not the compassion-wilted supplicant see the dear, dear prisoner? She rallied all her war-worn fairness with all her feminine art, and to her amazement, with a gleam of purpose yet without the softening of a lineament, he said yes, waved permission across to the guard and left her.
She passed the guard and knocked. Quietly in the room clinked the brick-mason's work. He strongly hummed his tune. Now he spoke, as if to his helper, who seemed to be leaving him. Again she knocked, and bent her ear. The mason sang aloud:
"Some day dis worl' come to an en',
I don't know how, I don't know when--"
She turned the door-knob and murmured, "Anna!"
The bricklaying clinked, tapped and scraped on. The workman hummed again his last two lines.
"Who is it?" asked a feigned voice which she knew so instantly to be Kincaid's that every beat of her heart jarred her frame.
"'Tis I, Anna, dear. 'Tis Flora." She was mindful of the sentry, but all his attention was in the busy hall.
There came a touch on the inner door-knob. "Go away!" murmured the manly voice, no longer disguised. "In God's name! for your own sake as well as hers, go instantly!"
"No," melodiously replied Flora, in full voice for the sentry's ear, but with resolute pressure on the door, "no, not at all.... No, I muz' not, cannot."
"Then wait one moment till you hear me at work!"