"Tell me, was he much like me?" he began again.
The girl smiled. "Why press me, Major André?" she said.
The peas were flying through her rosy fingers. The young soldier by her side reached out to a gaudy poppy and broke it from its frail stem. Now he was playing with it. A shaft of sunlight had strayed over from the flower field and was loitering on his unpowdered hair, beating it into gold.
Suddenly he spoke:
"I came all the way from York to obtain another view of you, Miss Townsend. The face by the chair window was so wonderfully sweet. Won't you tell me why you waved?"
The girl bent her head over the pea-pods. The bees, for a moment deep in the honeyed hearts of the flowers, were silent. The hot world seemed like a colored print in a picture-book, brilliant but without life.
"If you must know," she said, hesitatingly, "I thought for a moment you were the man I love. The color of the coat showed me my mistake."
She was smiling at his chagrin.
There was a silence for a few minutes.
"Where is your rebel to-day?" he said, when he had cast his dream away.