"Its condition may become worse," she said meaningly.
He understood the look in her eyes and replied:
"You mean that Grant will come?"
"Yes!" she exclaimed, pointing toward the flame of the battle. "Can't you see? Don't you know, Captain Prescott, that Grant will never turn back? It is but three days since he fought a battle as great as Gettysburg, and now he is fighting another. The man has come, and the time for the South is at hand."
"But what a price—what a price!" said Prescott.
"Yes," she replied quickly; "but it is the South, not the North, that demands payment."
Then she stopped, and brilliant colour flushed into her face.
"Forgive me for saying such things at such a time," she said. "I do not hate anybody in the South, and I am now with Southern people. Credit it to my bad taste."
But Prescott would not have it so. It was he who had spoken, he said, and she had the right to reply. Then he asked her indirectly of herself, and she answered willingly. Hers had been a lonely life, and she had been forced to develop self-reliance, though perhaps it had taken her further than she intended. She seemed still to fear that he would think her too masculine, a bit unwomanly; but her loneliness, the lack of love in her life, made a new appeal to Prescott. He admired her as she stood there in her splendid young beauty and strength—a woman with a mind to match her beauty—and wondered how his fleeting fancy could ever have been drawn to any other. She was going to that hostile Richmond, where she had been in such danger, and she would be alone there save for one weak woman, watched and suspected like herself. He felt a sudden overwhelming desire to protect her, to defend her, to be a wall between her and all danger.
Far off on the northern horizon the battle flamed and rumbled, and a faint reflection of its lurid glow fell on the forest where they stood. It may be that its reflection fell on Prescott's ardent mind and hastened him on.