She hesitated before answering. A vision rose before her,—a vision of fields covered with the slain, unburied dead. Here the paths of honor were cut short by the grave. She looked at Adam von Gelhorn. Here was no warrior except for courage, no knight but for chivalry. Yet how proudly his eyes met hers! What was this glance that seemed suddenly to fall upon her from some unbroken, awful height? It was a great thing to say, with the knowledge that came with that glance,—
"Do you no longer think so? Patriotism has its tests. This war will be long enough to sift enthusiasms."
Humbly he answered,—
"I wait my time."
Then, urged on by two motives, distinct, yet confluent, and so all-powerful,—
"Strange army, Adam, if all the soldiers waited for it."
He answered her as mildly as before, but with quite as deep assurance,—
"Not a man of them but has heard his name called. The time of a man is his own. The trumpet sounds, and though he were dead, yet shall he live."
"And do you wait that sound? Then verily you may remain here safely, and paint fine pictures of wounded men on awful battle-fields."
The artist looked at the woman. Did she speak to test his patience, or his courage, or his loyalty? Gravely he answered, true to himself, though baffled in his endeavor to read what she chose to conceal,—