Laura had given herself utterly to her husband, and if he had faults, if he was selfish, if he was sometimes coarse, if he was dissipated, she did not or would not see it. It was the passion of her life, the time when her whole nature went to flood tide and swept away all barriers. Was her husband ever cold or indifferent? She shut her eyes to everything but her sense of possession of her idol.
Three months passed. One morning her husband informed her that he had been ordered South, and must go within two hours.
"I can be ready," said Laura, cheerfully.
"But I can't take you. You must go back to Hawkeye."
"Can't-take-me?" Laura asked, with wonder in her eyes. "I can't live without you. You said——-"
"O bother what I said,"—and the Colonel took up his sword to buckle it on, and then continued coolly, "the fact is Laura, our romance is played out."
Laura heard, but she did not comprehend. She caught his arm and cried, "George, how can you joke so cruelly? I will go any where with you. I will wait any where. I can't go back to Hawkeye."
"Well, go where you like. Perhaps," continued he with a sneer, "you would do as well to wait here, for another colonel."
Laura's brain whirled. She did not yet comprehend. "What does this mean? Where are you going?"
"It means," said the officer, in measured words, "that you haven't anything to show for a legal marriage, and that I am going to New Orleans."