The younger men prepared to follow. "The next time that we meet," said Stafford, "may be in the thunder of the fight. I have an idea that I'll know it if you're there. I'll look out for you."
"And I for you," said Cleave. Each had spoken with entire courtesy and a marked lack of amity. There was a moment's pause, a feeling as of the edge of things. Cleave, not tall, but strongly made, with his thick dark hair, his tanned, clean shaven, squarely cut face, stood very straight, in earnest and formidable. The other, leaning against the pillar, was the fairer to look at, and certainly not without his own strength. The one thought, "I will know," and the other thought, "I believe you to be my foe of foes. If I can make you leave this place early, without speaking to her, I will do it."
Cleave turned squarely. "You have reason to regret leaving Greenwood—"
Stafford straightened himself against the pillar, studied for a moment the seal ring which he wore, then spoke with deliberation. "Yes. It is hard to quit Paradise for even such a tourney as we have before us. Ah well! when one comes riding back the welcome will be the sweeter!"
They went indoors. Later, alone in a pleasant bedroom, the man who had put a face upon matters which the facts did not justify, opened wide the window and looked out upon moon-flooded hill and vale. "Do I despise myself?" he thought. "If it was false to-night I may yet make it truth to-morrow. All's fair in love and war, and God knows my all is in this war! Judith! Judith! Judith! look my way, not his!" He stared into the night, moodily enough. His room was at the side of the house. Below lay a slope of flower garden, then a meadow, a little stream, and beyond, a low hilltop crowned by the old Greenwood burying-ground. "Why not sleep?... Love is war—the underlying, the primeval, the immemorial.... All the same, Maury Stafford—"
In her room upon the other side of the house, Judith had found the candles burning on the dressing-table. She blew them out, parted the window curtains of flowered dimity, and curling herself on the window-seat, became a part of the April night. Crouching there in the scented air, beneath the large, mild stars, she tried to think of Virginia and the coming war, but at the end of every avenue she came upon a morning hour. Perhaps it would be in the flower garden, perhaps in the summer-house, perhaps in the plantation woods where the windflower and the Judas tree were in bloom. Her heart was hopeful. So lifted and swept was the world to-night, so ready for great things, that her great thing also ought to happen, her rose of happiness ought to bloom. "After to-morrow," she said to herself, "I will think of Virginia, and I'll begin to help."
Toward daybreak, lying in the large four-post bed beneath the white tasselled canopy, she fell asleep. The sun was an hour high when she awoke. Hagar, the girl who waited upon her, came in and flung wide the shutters. "Dar's er mockin' bird singin' mighty neah dish-yer window! Reckon he gwine mek er nes' in de honeysuckle."
"I meant to wake up very early," said Judith. "Is any one downstairs yet, Hagar?—No, not that dress. The one with the little flowers."
"Dar ain' nobody down yit," said Hagar. "Marse Richard Cleave, he done come down early, 'way 'bout daybreak. He got one of de stable-men ter saddle he horse an' he done rode er way. Easter, she come in de house jes' ez he wuz leaving en he done tol' her ter tell marster dat he'd done been thinkin' ez how dar wuz so much ter do dat he'd better mek an early start, en he lef' good-bye fer de fambly. Easter, she ax him won't he wait 'twel the ladies come down, en he say No. 'Twuz better fer him ter go now. En he went. Dar ain' nobody else come down less'n hits Marse Maury Stafford.—Miss Judith, honey, yo' ain' got enny mo' blood in yo' face than dat ar counterpane! I gwine git yo' er cup er coffee!"