"Ah, Miss Anna, you--"
"Oh, when you know that the sooner they go the sooner comes the heartache and heartbreak for the hundreds of women they so light-heartedly leave behind them! I looked from Charlie to Flora--"
"You should have looked to Victorine. She wants the boy to go and her dad to go with him."
"Poor thoughtless child!"
"Why, Miss Anna, if I were a woman, and any man--with war coming on--could endure to hang back at home for love of me, I should feel--"
"Captain Kincaid! What we womenkind may feel is not to the point. It's how the men themselves feel toward the women who love them."
"They ought," replied the soldier, and his low voice thrilled like a sounding-board, "to love the women--out of every fibre of their being."
"Ah!" murmured the critic, as who should say, "checkmate!"
"And yet--" persisted this self-sung "ladies' man"--
"Yet what?" she softly challenged. (Would he stand by his speech, or his song?)