"Professional! What is your profession?"
This rather leading question was put with the most straightforward simplicity.
"I am a soldier."
"A soldier!"—looking very earnestly at him—"what a pity!"
"Why?" asked Wilton, surprised, and a little nettled. "Soldiers are necessary evils."
"But what evils! what symbols of deeper evils than themselves! I do not mean to say," interrupting herself with a sudden consciousness that her words were rude, while a delicate tinge of color came and went in her cheek, "that you are bad or wicked; but it is so sad to think that such things, or people rather, should be necessary still."
"No doubt it would be better for the world to be in an Arcadian or paradisiacal condition; but, as it is, I am afraid it will be a long time before we can dispense with fighting or fighting-men. However, you are right—war is a horrible thing, and I hope we shall have no more for a long time."
"Alas! how dare we hope that, so long as it is in the power of three or four men to plunge three or four nations into such horrors?"
"Ah, I see I have encountered a dangerous democrat," said Wilton, laughing; and, vaguely pleased to see her drawn out of her cool composure, he watched the varying color in her cheek while she was turning over the leaves of her sketch-book, seeming to seek for something. "Pardon me," said Wilton, after waiting for a reply, and determined to speak again, "but I imagine you are not English."
"I scarcely know—yes, I believe I am." She spoke in her former quiet tone again.